


It's Always the Little Things

by Uncertainty_Principle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Peter Parker, Blood, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Irondad, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, but he tries tho, repost, signofthree, slight AU, written before infinity war came out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 13:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17582045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uncertainty_Principle/pseuds/Uncertainty_Principle
Summary: Previously posted under username signofthree. This post-IW fic was written pre-IW, so it is pure speculation based on the trailers. And now, I suppose, a slight AU.It’s been months since the Avengers defeated Thanos, and Peter’s doing fine. Really. Okay, so he has like, ten times as many villains to fight lately (and what is up with their costumes?). And sure, Tony has barely spoken to him since they got back. And, yeah, the whole coming back from the dead thing is a mind trip. But he’s dealing with it. All things considered, he’s doing a pretty good job of it too.With everything else that’s going on, a bruise seems like such a little thing that Peter doesn’t pay it any attention, even when it doesn’t fade nearly as fast as it should. It’s just a bruise. It’s no big deal.Enter an alien virus, throw in some Dr. Strange, inter-dimensional note passing, and a very, very angry Tony Stark, and suddenly it’s not such a little deal anymore.It’s always the little things, isn’t it?





	1. The Bruise

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all, as promised, I'm reposting some of my old works, previously posted under signofthree. Bear in mind, this was written BEFORE Infinity War came out, so it's rife with inaccuracies. 
> 
> I took forever reposting it because the cached versions were deleted and therefore I: 1) had to rewrite the summary 2) had to reformat every chapter, and because I am a super lazy individual when it comes to both of those things, it has taken me the better part of six months to get around to it. EDIT: thank you, thank you, thank you to JBS_Forever for finding the original summary. Besides being one of the best writers in the fandom, they are also just the best. Period. 
> 
> Anyway, sorry this has taken me so long, loves! I'm doing a chapter at a time for now, but since this whole thing is written already, it shouldn't take me long to get everything posted. Thanks for bearing with me!

It begins with a bruise.

To be fair to what seems like an unremarkable beginning, the bruise is an impressive one: it roams the length of his right side from his hip almost all the way to his armpit, shaped like a fat bolt of lightning and the color of spilled motor oil. Peter obtains said bruise when the Villain of the Week (as he’s taken to calling them, much to May’s displeasure: she thinks he’s being flippant about his would-be nemeses. In reality Peter is just being literal; lately it feels like these weirdos must coordinate their schedules to mess up his Mondays) flings him through an ancient billboard advertising a 1997 run of the musical _Cats_.

“I’m starting to think you have something against our feline friends,” says Peter, after he’s caught himself with a web to a nearby fire escape and scrambled back to the rooftop where the guy is waiting, wearing a pair of skin-tight leopard print leggings, a fur vest, and a snarl to match the one painted on the face of whatever Broadway washout’s face Peter just decimated. “Whatever cat wronged you, I promise, violence is not the answer.” He flings a web at the guy, who dodges it with a roar. “Especially not with cats. You should see the scratches I get off the ones in trees around here, man, and those are the ones I’m trying to _help_.”

The Villain of the Week answers this by tossing a net—an honest to God _net_ —over Peter’s head.

There’s not much time to think about the bruise after that, what with the cat-hating (or possibly cat-loving? The outfit does not offer an explanation for itself, though it totally owes the world at least that much for, you know, existing) evil dude and his net to keep Peter occupied.

He doesn’t think about it much that evening, either, barely glancing at it in the mirror as he strips out of the suit and clambers into a much-needed shower.  He’s used to bruises. Bruises of all shapes and sizes, colors and creeds. If he had a nickel for every bruise, and yada yada yada. Add to that the fact that this one, for all its vibrant color, barely even hurts, and it’s a wonder it even gets its cursory glance in the bathroom mirror at all.

The bruise only becomes remarkable the next day. Because unlike its innumerable counterparts, this bruise is still there when Peter wakes up the next morning.

In retrospect Peter will recognize that he probably should have done something then. He’s been Spider-Man for over a year now, which might not seem like a long time until one takes into consideration what he’s done: Fought Captain America. Defeated the Vulture. Travelled to a hostile exoplanet to battle a megalomaniac alien warlord hellbent on humanity’s destruction. Let him never forget that last one.

(He can’t. He tries.)

The point is, the training wheels are fully off, and Peter has had enough experience and enough lectures from those with more of it to know that he is supposed to get himself checked out when things go weird, particularly when those things are his powers. _Extra_ particularly when the specific thing is his healing power, which, above all the others, is definitely the only reason he’s still alive today.

But he doesn’t.

He has a t-shirt already halfway over his head, his hair all flat on one side from sleeping with rocklike stillness all night, when he notices it in his bedroom mirror. For a minute his brow furrows as he traces the outline of the bruise with his fingertips. It’s yellow around the edges, so it’s healed _some_ , more than a normal person could hope for in a night, but about a hundred times less than he’s used to. It still doesn’t hurt that bad, but it doesn’t _look_ good. Like, don’t-ever-let-May-see-this kind of not good.

Peter’s eyes dart to the StarkPhone on his desk. The unsmashable, waterproof, upgraded-with-alien-tech, one-of-a-kind StarkPhone that Tony gave him after Thanos and told him to use if he was ever out of the suit and in need of assistance.

“Any little thing,” Tony had said as he handed it over. “Large or small. Pick it up. Use it. And try not to be too weird about it, kid, because the whole watery-eyed thing you’re doing is giving me reflux already.”

Peter promised that he would. And then—nothing. Radio silence on both ends.

Looking at it now, Peter knows he doesn’t want to be the one to break that silence. And certainly not over something as insignificant as a bruise.

He pulls the shirt the rest of the way on, stuffs the StarkPhone into the bottom of his bag like he does every day, and he goes to school.

* * *

Here’s the thing: Peter isn’t trying to be vindictive about the no-contact deal. He knows it’s probably not intentional, this silence from Tony. Not like the whole post-Germany, pre-Homecoming era, when an occasional disdainful text from Happy was the closest he got to any word from the man. He also knows that the whole “You died in my arms, kid,” thing is probably a lot to come to terms with. He _knows_ it’s a lot to come to terms with, because he’s spent pretty much the whole time they’ve been back coming to terms with it himself. So, yes, he gets it. Tony needs time. Tony needs space.

Or maybe not so much space. Space, Peter thinks, they have both had enough of.

Time though, for sure. The only problem is, it’s been months since Thanos and he’s only seen Tony twice: once, at the memorial service for the fallen, where Tony had given him the phone. Another time in Manhattan, when they’d teamed up with Wanda and Black Widow to fight some pretty sub-par but nevertheless numerous Doom Bots. That had been the first time they’d been together as something like a team since the incident, and Peter really hoped that Tony would suggest they talk—or at the very least like, grab a slice of pizza—after the last of the crappy bots were rounded up. Instead he’d gotten an ironic salute and a “Nice job, kid,” before Tony had blasted off into the sunset, leaving Peter alone in the middle of the cleanup crew.

Peter has the phone. He knows Tony wouldn’t have given it to him if he didn’t mean for him to use it. It’s just that Peter really thought, what with the fact that he was the one who actually, you know, _died_ , maybe this time Tony would be the one to make the first move.

So he doesn’t call about the bruise.

He doesn’t call about the next one, either, because even though that one takes longer to heal than the first, it’s a lot smaller and again, just a bruise. And so is the one after that. And the one after that.

Everything else seems to be in working order, though. He’s scaling walls and slinging webs and punching dudes in rhino and lizard and octopus costumes in the face, because apparently it’s animal theme month in New York City and he’s the unwitting zookeeper. So he has to get a little better at blending foundation, so what? Peter’s a modern man. He can rock a little makeup. Especially if it means he doesn’t have to be the first to break in this quiet game whose rules he does not, admittedly, really understand.

It’s really not a big deal.

Until, all of a sudden, it really is.

Peter would much rather it had happened in the middle of a fight. He has no problem passing out when he’s just, say, taken a mechanical fist to the skull, or been flung off the Brooklyn Bridge, or whatever. Passing out when you’re getting your ass kicked by a supervillain is at worst a free pass, at best a badge of honor and a couple thousand extra views on YouTube.

Passing out in the middle of decathlon practice? Not so much.

The one plus side is that it happens too quickly for Peter to know what’s coming. One second he’s standing up to take the podium for his turn as grandmaster during lightning rounds. The next he’s flat on his back, blinking up at a circle of worried faces, plus MJ’s impassive one, looming down at him like a ring of close-set planets around a very nauseated sun.

“It’s not a bad tactic if you’re stumped,” says MJ, who is the first to offer him a hand, “but maybe next time just admit you don’t know how to pronounce ‘iridocyclitis.’”

She pulls him into a sitting position while half a dozen other hands guide him there. Peter blinks while his vision spins, still trying to figure out how he got on the floor.

“You okay there, Parker?” says Mr. Harrington, who looks bemused and awkward as he pushes into Peter’s eyeline. “I called the nurse, just—uh—maybe stay on the ground for a minute.”

“What?” Peter’s thoughts are still fuzzy and his pulse feels erratic, but at the word _nurse_ he regains some clarity. The last thing he needs is anyone with any sort of medical expertise examining him. There’s a reason overlarge flannels are his shirt of choice. Hello, unearned biceps. “No—really Mr. Harrington, I’m fine. I just must have stood up too fast. I, uh, I skipped lunch.”

“You ate four peanut butter sandwiches,” says MJ. “It barely counts as food, but it counts.”

Peter tries to throw her a look that conveys just how much of a traitor and a stalker she is, but he’s pretty sure it just comes off as a vague grimace. MJ returns this with an unblinking stare.

Peter looks around until he finds Ned’s face among those clustered around them, and sees that he, at least, knows Peter isn’t suffering from low blood sugar. Ned jerks his head at the door while no one’s looking, and Peter nods as subtly as he can.

“Mr. Harrington, I can take him home,” says Ned. “I just got my license, and my mom let me borrow her car today.”

“I’m ninety percent sure that’s not the procedure in passing out-type situations, Ned. Peter, why don’t you—?”

But Peter is already scrambling to his feet.

“No, really, I’m good, I’m totally fine,” he says. “My aunt is a nurse, she can—you know… take a look… anyway, I’ll see you all at practice on Thursday.”

And he and Ned hightail it out of the auditorium.

In the hallway, safely around several corners and alone, Peter leans against a row of lockers and feels his own pulse while Ned hovers around him anxiously. It feels thready and fast, which is extra worrying, because Peter’s heart has beat strong and slow ever since the spider bite. With one notable exception.

“What _was_ that, Peter?” says Ned, who is peering at him like a doddery grandma. He’s practically wringing his hands. “Did you really not eat enough?” He glances over his shoulder and lowers his voice. “Was it one of your—you know— _space nightmares?_ ”

Peter’s been having night terrors. Not all the time, but often enough that he should have known not to spend the night at Ned’s a few weeks ago. Now Ned knows, even if he doesn’t know the extent of what happened to cause them. Ned, thankfully, was not there—nor was he in Wakanda, so to him the whole thing is just another vaguely scary alien battle, more distant than the one that happened in New York and therefore infinitely cooler.

“No,” says Peter. “No, those only happen when I’m, y’know, asleep. And stop calling them space nightmares, you make me feel like I’m in an episode of _The Twilight Zone_. And not the good ones. The crappy nineties remake.”

“Except you _do_ have space nightmares. Nightmares about the time you were in _space_ , Peter. Which, okay, I know it can’t have been all awesome and whatever, but still, you have to admit that is the coolest thing that anyone could possibly have nightmares about.”

“Still nightmares, Ned.”

Peter lifts his hands to his face, and sees that they are trembling slightly. He feels flu-ish, which is also worrying: he hasn’t been sick since the night of the bite.

Ned’s smile fades.

“For real though,” he says, “what happened back there?”

Peter shakes his head. “Maybe I just did stand up to fast,” he says. “Can you actually take me home, Ned? Maybe I should, um, lay down for a while.”

“Yeah, for sure man.”

Ned loads Peter into his mom’s minivan and spends the ride home expounding on theories about Peter’s sudden low blood pressure, the main of which involves the hydraulic lymph system by which spiders operate.

“—and that’s why when they die, spiders get all curled up and crunchy,” he concludes as they pull up to the curb outside Peter’s apartment. “Do you think maybe that’s what happened to you?”

Peter, who is already halfway out the door and trying not to think to hard about these dying spiders that Ned is enthusing about, says, “I’ll look into it, Ned, but I’m pretty sure I’m still full of human blood.”

“Uh, yeah you are.” Ned’s expression goes suddenly serious. “Look at your wrist, dude.”

Peter rolls his sleeve back automatically, and feels a sinking in his stomach that has nothing to do with low blood pressure or dried-up lymph fluid.

There is a ring of mottled bruises around his wrist, so purple they are almost black. More worrying than their color is the fact that Peter has done absolutely nothing to put them there.

“Peter…” says Ned.

Peter pulls his sleeve down.

“Thanks for the ride,” he says, “I’ll see you tomorrow at school.”

He slams the door before Ned can say anything else, and runs inside before he hears the car pull away. Takes the elevator to the apartment, and is relieved that May is still at work, because the first thing he does is pull out the StarkPhone. Leaning against the doorway, Peter takes a few calming breaths, sets his jaw, and dials.

* * *

“On a scale of one to ten, how sure are you that you don’t want me to call Tony?”

Dr. Banner hunches when he sits on his little stool, peering up at Peter—sat opposite him, though higher, upon a chrome-steel examining table—with a doubtful look on his face. Peter has noticed this about Bruce, the few times he’s been around him in Bruce form—it’s like he tries to make himself smaller to compensate for how big he can get.

“Fourteen,” says Peter. “Make that, like, twenty-nine. I am three thousand percent sure I don’t want you to call him.”

“So that’s a yes on being sure?”

Peter gives him a much better withering look than he managed to give MJ. Bruce raises his hands in surrender.

“Just making sure,” he says. “I’ll just get back to this, shall I?”

He returns to the blood-draw kit he has been preparing, while Peter watches him, wary. He knows it’s irrational, but he’ll take being thrown through a cat-man’s face over needles any day.

“Why would I even have to call Tony in the first place?” he says irritably, mainly to distract himself while Bruce ties the tourniquet around his bicep. “It’s not like he’s my dad.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” says Bruce vaguely, gesturing to their surroundings. “It’s his multi-million dollar facility. You’re his multi-million dollar Spider-Kid. And I’ll just stop talking now, how about that?”

Bruce has correctly interpreted Peter’s stony expression.

They are indeed in Tony’s multi-million dollar facility. More specifically, they are in the Avengers’ Headquarters upstate. Peter asked Bruce to meet him at a time when Tony was not there, and Bruce obliged, albeit reluctantly. Peter is pleased that it didn’t take too much persuading; less pleased that he won’t be reimbursed for the frankly massive Uber fee he shelled out to get here. There goes science camp next summer. He’ll have to tell Aunt May he’s outgrown it—like she won’t see through that bald-faced lie. But he didn’t want to have to ask her to take him, because that would require explaining why he was going, and after everything he’s put her through this past year there is no way he’s going to freak her out for what is probably nothing more than an iron deficiency.

“Here we go,” says Bruce, and Peter winces as the needle goes in.

They both watch his blood pump into the three little medical tubes Bruce has laid out, Bruce switching them deftly enough that he doesn’t so much as jostle Peter as he does.

“I always half expect it to come out green,” says Peter.

“Hey, that’s my schtick, kid,” says Bruce, popping off the last of the vials and removing the needle to another little wince from Peter. “You’re all red, as far as I can tell.” He touches one of the bruises on Peter’s arm. It’s a new one. They’ve been appearing all over for the past few days, ever since Peter passed out at practice. “Maybe a little too much?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” says Peter dismissively. “I probably need to take a vitamin or something.”

“That’s probably it,” says Bruce. “Well, I’ll get this to the lab. It might take me a few hours to get all of the results, do you have something you can do while you wait?”

“Yeah, I have homework.”

Bruce gives a little shudder.

“Yech,” he says. Then, “Sorry. I just get a little” —he makes a wavering gesture with his hands— “when I remember how young you are.”

Peter jumps off the exam table to avoid Bruce’s eye, grabs his flannel from the chair and pulls it over his bruised arms.  

“Sorry, ki—I mean, sorry, Pete,” says Bruce. “It’s not so much a symptom of your age as it is a symptom of mine.”

Peter looks up, manages a smile.

“You going upstairs?” says Bruce. “I know Wanda would love to see you, she’s been raving about you since Manhattan.”

Peter’s stomach ratchets down another few notches. He likes Wanda, likes her a lot, but he’s not sure he can handle being called _adorable_ in six different Romanian dialects right now.

It must show in his face, because Bruce says, “Something wrong?”

“Oh—no. I just, I didn’t think anyone else would be around, that’s all.”

Bruce considers him for a minute.

“You wanna come to the lab?” he says.

Peter nods gratefully. He grabs his backpack and Bruce claps a hand on his shoulder before leading the way out of the medical hall. Peter tries not to read too far into the fact that he does this very gently.

Peter sets up his homework at a table in the corner while Bruce goes to work. They pass the first half hour or so in amicable silence, but after a while Peter starts to get that prickly feeling he gets when someone is watching him. It’s like a miniature version of his Spidey-Sense, sans the terror.

He turns around. The centrifuge is mid-cycle, which might explain why Bruce is staring at him. Bruce awkwardly attempts to cover this fact up by swivelling his stool the other direction, and then sighs, realizing he’s caught. He swivels back, but doesn’t say anything for a moment, pressing his lips together like he wants to hold the words in until he’s sure of them.

Peter raises an eyebrow.

“You look like you’re getting ready to ask me to prom, Dr. Banner,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered, but maybe pick a more romantic setting next time.”

Bruce blows out a puff of air.

“Jeez, Tony really is rubbing off on you.” He shakes his head. “Okay, I know I apologized for the kid stuff earlier, and I’ll do it again in a second, but shouldn’t we maybe tell your aunt you’re here? I feel a little weird about your… you know… minor status. Non-consensual medical services and all that jazz.”

“It’s consensual. I’m consenting, look. Don’t make it weird, Dr. Banner.”

“I think we just passed weird.” Bruce rubs the back of his neck. “Peter…”

Peter sighs, twiddling his pencil between his fingers and avoiding Bruce’s eye.

“My aunt puts up with a lot from me,” he says. “After, um, after Thanos and all that… and she’s already trying really hard to still be cool with all the Spider-Man stuff… I just, I don’t want to worry her unless I have to.”

It’s Bruce’s turn to sigh. He chews the inside of his cheek as he does it, but nods nonetheless.

“Well, lucky for you, I’m not an actual medical doctor,” he says. “So I think we’ll get a pass on this very shaky ethical decision for today.”

“Wait, you’re not a medical doctor? Don’t you have, like, nineteen PhDs?”

“Seven,” Bruce corrects. Seeing the skepticism on Peter’s face, his jaw drops. “Come on! That’s impressive! That’s more than you, you eleventh grade delinquent. That’s more than Tony! It’s a crazy amount of PhDs.”

“Yeah, but you’re not a _real_ doctor if you don’t have a medical degree. You’re a total hack, dude.”

Bruce laughs. Peter laughs too. It’s a nice break from the tension, until the centrifuge dings. Then Peter’s smile sloughs off as he watches Bruce transfer his blood to a slide and slip it under a microscope.

“Let’s see what we have here,” he says, pressing his face to the eyepiece.

And then he doesn’t say anything at all for a while. For so long, in fact, that Peter has to be the one to break the silence.

“Um… Dr. Banner? Is it anemia, or something?”

“It’s, uh.” Bruce pulls away from the eyepiece at last, rubs his eyes a few times, and returns to it. “Uh,” he says again.

“You’re starting to freak me out, man.”

“Sorry Pete I just… I haven’t seen anything like this before.”

“Like what?”

Bruce gives him a fleeting look, like he’s assessing Peter’s fortitude, and then presses a button to project the image from the microscope onto the screen on the wall.

The image is too zoomed-in for the blood to look anything like blood. Bruce is looking at it on a much more microscopic level, and the image is swimming with what looks like little flecks of black sand, except the flecks are sharp-looking and weirdly iridescent.

“Woah,” says Peter, hopping off his chair. “Is that—?”

“I think it’s a virus,” says Bruce, standing up to join Peter in his close examination of the weird flecks. They’re moving, crawling across the surface of his hugely-magnified blood cells. The movement makes them look sinister, and Peter shudders. “It’s acting like a virus,” Bruce goes on, pointing. “Look, it’s attacking your red blood cells.”

“What’s it doing?”

“Messing with your clotting factor, I think.” Bruce zooms in even further, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Which would explain the bruises. And then some. The concentration of these things in your bloodstream is insane. They’re definitely causing anemia, low blood pressure… it’s no wonder you passed out.”

Peter swallows. “Okay,” he says, “okay, so why isn’t my healing factor getting rid of it, then? I haven’t even had a cold in over a year, what’s different about this?”

“I don’t… Pete, I don’t think this is terrestrial.”

Peter draws back from his examination of his own blood to give Bruce a startled look.

“I have an _alien_ virus? That’s… I can’t even decide if that’s cool or terrifying. Wait, if I got this in space then why isn’t anyone else sick? Tony’s okay, right?”

His worry sharpens at the thought. What if that’s why Tony hasn’t been calling him?

But Bruce shakes his head. “He hasn’t said anything. Granted, Tony’s not always the most forthcoming, but… we’d know if he was sick,” he says.

“How do you know?”

Bruce hesitates.

“Because judging from the number of these suckers and the amount of bleeding they’re causing, your healing factor is about the only reason you’re even standing right now. If you weren’t enhanced…”

The rest of the thought goes unspoken, but the silence feels sharper than the sentence it implies.

Peter feels woozy again. He doesn’t want to admit this, so he slowly lowers himself onto the stool Bruce has just vacated.

“It must have been on Titan,” he mumbles. “I was alone on Titan.”

“I thought Dr. Strange was with you.”

“Just his astral projection.”

“Oh. Right. Of course. Astral… astral projection. That makes sense.”

There is another excruciating silence. Tentatively, Bruce puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Pete, are you—?”

But Peter can’t stand that. He can’t stand being the object of pity; he can’t stand being seen as weak. It’s not just that he can’t stand it; it’s just not _possible_ , not after Thanos. He gets to his feet, ignoring the way his head swims when he does.

“Okay,” he says, “okay, alien virus. That’s just tiny aliens, right? Well, we’ve all fought real, life-size aliens, haven’t we? How bad can this be after that? So what do we do, Dr. Banner?”

Bruce’s face is all screwed up, like he can’t think what to say. Like he’s holding back some emotion that Peter very much does not want to see.

“I’m just guessing here, Pete, I mean, I’ll have to do some more tests, but… Just, judging from how rapidly they’re multiplying and the timeline of the bruises, I think whatever this thing is probably has a cumulative effect. It’s obviously wearing down your defenses, even your healing factor isn’t going to be able to keep up forever.”

“So what do we _do?_ ”

“I don’t know.”

It’s not the answer Peter was hoping for.

“Shit,” he says.

This time, he sinks onto the stool involuntarily. Bruce crouches down in front of him swiftly, this time gripping him by both shoulders.

“Pete,” he says, “Pete, I shouldn’t have said that. I mean I don’t know what to do _yet_. I’m obviously going to do everything I can, okay? This is… it’s not good, but your healing is doing you some major favors, okay? We’ve got some time. We’ll figure this out.”

Peter nods, but he doesn’t say anything, because he’s still battling an overwhelming wave of lightheadedness.

Bruce reaches behind him and turns off the projection.

“Peter,” he says, his voice firmer than it has been all afternoon. “We need to tell the others about this.”

This gets Peter talking.

“No. No way.”

“Peter, they might have ideas I don’t, this is the type of thing that needs all hands on deck.”

“Dr. Banner, _no_! They already think of me as a little kid. You do too, you said it yourself! What are they going to say if they know I’m making a fuss about a—a cold? How are they going to trust me to fight alongside them? They already have their doubts after what happened with Thanos, you _know_ they do.”

“This isn’t a _cold_ , Pete.”

“An alien cold, then. Please, Dr. Banner, can’t we try to figure it out on our own first?”

“We should at least tell Tony.”

Peter blanches. A memory fills his head, a memory of Tony, pale and trembling and covered in dirt and blood, holding his hand while he apologized over and over, _I’m sorry, Mr. Stark. I’m sorry._ And then another—Tony’s face when he realized that Dr. Strange had used the Time Stone successfully, that Peter was still alive. The relief. The regret.

“Dr. Strange,” Peter says.

Bruce’s eyebrows fly up.

“We’ll talk to Dr. Strange,” Peter says, more firmly. “He’ll know what to do. And if… if he doesn’t… then _maybe_ we can tell Tony.”

Bruce looks like he’s going to object. He squints at Peter with so much doubt Peter almost backs down. But he doesn’t. He sets his jaw and meets Bruce’s gaze, and after a minute Bruce drops his eyes.

“Dr. Strange it is,” he says.


	2. The Fight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one’s for you, JBS_Forever!

“You should have come to me right away.”

Dr. Strange is sweeping around the upper floors of his weird Greenwich Village mansion, yanking artifacts off shelves and muttering to himself while Bruce and Peter stand by, neither of them quite sure what to do with themselves. Peter always gets a low-key tingle on the back of his neck when he’s here—magic does funny things to a guy’s genetically enhanced super senses, who knew?—so when Strange addresses him directly he jumps and nearly knocks over a miniscule vase on a nearby table. 

Strange catches the vase with a flick of his wrist and a roll of his eyes, directing it to a shelf out of Peter’s clumsy reach.

“Please watch where you’re fumbling,” he says, “there’s a demon in there I’d really like a to keep contained.”

“Are you serious?” says Bruce, eyeing the vase. 

Strange shrugs. “It’s a small one, but nasty. Soul sucker. You’ll never see it coming.”

“I kind of hate my life,” says Bruce.

“Mine is awesome,” says Peter, tearing his own eyes away from the vase and forcing himself to focus. “Which is sorta why we’re here.”

Dr. Strange nods, his hands full of jars and bottles, and guides them into the sitting room, where he directs them to an antique sofa while he sets everything down on the table at the center of the room and begins sifting through it.

Peter has never really been sure how to feel about Dr. Strange. There’s no denying that he’s got some incredible powers—and of course there’s the whole thing where he saved Peter’s life—but the man himself has always struck Peter as abrasive. When they showed him the blood slides from the day before he’d just squinted at Peter like he was a teacher who suspected Peter of cheating, waved his hands over him for a while (causing Peter to tingle all over) and then swept up the stairs without a word. The scolding a moment ago was the first thing he’d said to either of them in over half an hour. 

Peter has the same feeling, like he is some truant about to be reprimanded, as he and Bruce give each other side-eyed glances and watch Dr. Strange mix something with his back turned to them. When Strange turns around he’s holding a cup full to the brim with some nasty-looking yellow sludge. He hands it to Peter.

“Drink,” he says. 

“Oh,” says Peter, surprised. “That was easy.”

“It’s not a cure,” Strange snaps, rolling his eyes again. “It’s vitamin C and turmeric. And that’s just a start. Banner showed me your bloodwork, you need to be taking about a dozen supplements a day until we figure out how to treat this.”

“Right,” says Peter, and he tries not to gag when he takes a sip of the vile concoction to cover his embarrassment.

“So I take it when you say  _ find a cure, _ you mean you can’t, uh, blast this into another universe through a wormhole or… something?”

Dr. Strange turns his even, penetrating gaze to Bruce, who looks, thankfully, just as embarrassed as Peter.

“I could blast Peter into another universe,” says Strange conversationally. “But as the point of this discussion is to keep him with us—in the physical and metaphysical senses—I’m thinking that would be counterproductive.”

“I see,” says Bruce. 

He clears his throat. 

Strange turns to look at Peter. 

“I’ve examined your energies,” he says, “both personal and the one surrounding the infection. Dr. Banner is right to call it a virus. It’s quite literally leeching your life force as we speak. It’s no wonder it latched onto you; it works, I believe, by attaching itself to your DNA to identify your most nutritive areas, and then feeds off of those. Since your powers originated in the bloodstream—well, there you go. With your enhanced healing and strength, whatever this virus is must be having a smorgasbord.”

“I’m always happy to give back to the community,” says Peter. “Feed the hungry and all that. But maybe not so much communities of alien bugs that are trying to eat my blood.”

“Indeed,” says Strange. “Well, unfortunately the DNA attachment is what prevents me from removing it the way Dr. Banner suggested. It’s bonding to your genetic fabric, which makes it exceedingly difficult to banish magically, if not impossible.”

Peter’s stomach squirms. He forces himself to take another sip of the turmeric shake and tries not to let the tremble in his hands show. He thinks Bruce catches it anyway. He certainly gives Peter a prolonged sideways glance before saying,

“Okay, so what about removing it medically? Is that something we can do?”

“We?” says Strange. “I didn’t think you had a medical degree, Dr. Banner.”

Peter snorts halfway through a sip, and dribbles yellow goo all down the front of his t-shirt.

“What is with you people?” says Banner. “I am—I am a world renowned geneticist, thank you, and in case you didn’t notice, Peter came to me first.”

“Yes,” says Strange, “and then you came to me. An actual doctor.”

Peter is trying so hard not to laugh now he can feel himself going red. It’s kind of surreal, considering the circumstances.

“Oh, that’s right,” says Bruce. “And maybe next time Peter wants you to, uh, turn his intestines into a bunch of colorful ribbons or whatever it is magician doctors do, he’ll come to you first.”

“Neurologist and neurosurgeon, actually. Also world renowned.”

“You know what, I misspoke. I’m renowned on several worlds, actually. Yeah, ever heard of Sakaar? I’m kind of a big deal there, so.”

“You mean the trash planet? How does one become famous on an actual universal garbage dump, Banner? And speaking of interplanetary fame, it seems I misspoke as well. Except when I said ‘world’ I meant to say ‘interdimensionally.’”

Peter doesn’t know what’s happening, but he has the sudden sense that both men are rather enjoying themselves. 

“Oh, that’s just—” Bruce begins. 

“Uh, guys?” says Peter. “Can we, um—?”

He’s all about a little team bonding, but not when he’s facing down a pretty badly foreshortened lifetime of drinking this yellow gunk. He gestures to himself, and it seems to snap the two older men out of their weird contest. They both turn to look at him.

“Still here,” says Peter. “Still playing host to about a gazillion micro invaders. So maybe you could put your interdimensionally renowned heads together and—”

And it’s just like in decathlon practice. One second he’s staring down a magician and a genetically-altered super scientist (okay, it’s not  _ just _ like decathlon practice) and the next he’s slumped over, covered in turmeric and blinking sluggishly while someone taps his face and calls his name. 

Blinking groggily, Peter tries to push himself into a more dignified position, but the hands on his face have other ideas. They move to his shoulders and lay him flat on the couch, while another pair prop his feet up on a stack of pillows.

“Woah,” says Peter faintly.

“You with us?” says Bruce, who it seems owns the first pair of hands.

“I’m… I didn’t even stand up that time,” says Peter. “That seems not good.”

“Fair assessment,” says Dr. Strange near his feet. 

“Yeah,” Bruce agrees. He looks over his shoulder at Strange, one hand still on Peter’s shoulder. “This just went from ‘unamusing’ to ‘dire,’ I think. If magic isn’t going to cut it, we need some other options and fast.” He turns back to Peter. “Pete, I really think—”

“ _ No _ ,” says Peter, and he tries to sit up again, only to be forced down once more, this time by his own swimming head. “No one else, it’s not—it’s not that bad.”

“As wrong as Peter is,” says Strange, “I don’t think involving anyone else on this planet is going to do us any good. It’s a virus from another world. We should probably consult some people who are experts in that arena.”

“You’re thinking Thor?”

“Thor’s in a different universe right now.”

“Yeah, that’s what you just said.”

“I mean he’s in a different  _ version _ of the universe,” says Strange. “He’s doing important timeline work, it would be…  _ unwise _ to disturb him.”

“Did I mention I hate my life?”

But even as Bruce shakes his head, Peter is lifting his, a grin spreading on his face in spite of the incandescent worry in his stomach.

“You’re talking about the Guardians,” he says. 

Strange nods.

“They’re more extensively travelled on this plane of existence than I am, they might have seen something similar to this virus in the course of those travels.”

“Dude,  _ yes _ . I totally give you permission to do that.” 

“Thank you, though I don’t need it.”

Peter leans back, still grinning. To say that he likes the Guardians is an understatement. Meeting Quill and Rocket and Drax and Groot was almost enough to make up for all of the other stuff that happened surrounding that meeting, and even Gamora, for all her terrifying glaring, is so badass Peter still can’t decide if he is afraid of her or in love with her (probably both). It’s the one part of the whole deal that Peter has been one hundred percent honest about with Ned, and the memory Ned’s jealousy has gotten him through more than one night of bad dreams. They promised to keep in touch, and even though so far they’ve been as silent as Tony, Peter’s more willing to give them a pass considering they are probably hundreds of lightyears away.

Dr. Strange, however, is frowning. 

“You seem less enthusiastic about this than Peter,” says Bruce. 

“There’s a small problem,” says Strange, and he looks displeased that he has to admit to encountering something as human as a problem. “I don’t know where they are.”

“Okay.” Bruce gets to his feet, and Peter’s grin disappears. There is a faint green tinge to the back of Bruce’s neck, and Peter suddenly realizes that Bruce really isn’t being flippant about the situation being dire. If Bruce is this close to losing control, Peter might be in more trouble than he’s willing to admit. 

“Well,  _ Doctor _ Strange,” Bruce goes on, “I hope you’re not about to tell me that you also aren’t able to find the Guardians with magic. Because then I might start to wonder whether magic even has a point at all.”

“Of course I can find them,” says Strange, but not as snappishly as he might have. It seems he’s noticed the green as well. “My worry is how long it will take. All I have are breadcrumbs, and in the scheme of an entire Galaxy, breadcrumbs are even more crumb-like.”

Peter props himself up on his elbows. 

“Not to rush you on the intragalactic magical goose chase,” he says, “but the whole swooning thing is a little nineteen-forties for my taste. I’m also pretty sure if I keep passing out like this I’m going to get my ass kicked twelve ways before lunch time. And that’s just the school bullies. As for fighting crime, I’m told consciousness is key.”

He tries for a laugh, but it is quickly drowned out by a barrage of reprimands as both men descend on him.

“—not going to fight crime in this state, you must be—”

“—let’s not even  _ mention _ the internal bleeding you could cause—”  

“—really great way to repay your aunt, Peter, just really great—”

“Okay, okay!” Peter holds his hands up. “I surrender! No crime fighting with an alien virus, I get the message. Yikes.”

“You need rest,” says Strange. “A low heart rate and a nutrient-dense diet.”

“ _ That _ I can’t promise,” says Peter. “You haven’t tried my aunt’s cooking.” 

“We need to tell—”

“Seriously, Dr. Banner,  _ no. _ ”

Bruce blows a breath out through his nose.

“Fine,” he says. “I will work on keeping you alive and healthy until Dr. Strange gets the message to the Guardians, but if this thing starts to go south I  _ will _ tell your aunt myself. Got it?”

Peter purses his lips, but he nods. “Fair.”

“Well then, let’s not dally,” says Strange. He claps his hands together, and when he pulls them apart there is a web of shimmering golden strings between them, crisscrossed around a little window at the center, through which Peter can see a glimpse of a bright yellow sky. Strange peers through the window, expands it until it’s as tall as he is, and says, “I’ll be back in a few days. Do your best with him, Banner.”

And he steps through, disappearing. The portal disappears with a fizzling  _ pop _ , and a piece of paper drifts to the ground where Strange was just standing, faintly singed around the edges.

“That condescending—”

Bruce cuts himself off as he stoops to retrieve the paper. 

“What is it?” says Peter. 

“A shopping list,” says Bruce. He sighs. “You up for a trip to Vitamin Cottage?”

* * *

 

Bruce drops him off at his apartment that evening with a sack full of supplements and a furrowed brow. Before he leaves he makes Peter promise, again, that he won’t go out patrolling until they hear back from Dr. Strange. 

Peter promises. Peter means it.

And then, as tends to happen with promises involving Spider-Man, Peter breaks it.

But not right away. Three days pass. Three days of itching and worrying and checking his phone every five minutes (lots of worried messages from Bruce but nothing about Strange) and swallowing so many pills he could probably open an apothecary—or get kicked out of school, if anyone ever saw the contents of the backpack, and didn’t bother to investigate past the massive quantities of capsules he’s taken to carrying around. 

The vitamins help some. He doesn’t pass out again—which, great, he’ll take it. On the other hand he’s still bruising like a dropped apple, and in lieu of actually fainting, the low blood pressure recedes into a constant, low-grade fatigue that is almost as inconvenient. Ned keeps having to prod him awake when he falls asleep in class, and the anxious questions from him and pointed stares from MJ make him want to run home as soon as the bell rings each day, just to get some relief from all the pointed frowning. Except he doesn’t get it at home, because May has noticed as well.

“You look peaky,” she says when he drops onto the couch beside her in the afternoon of the second day. “Are you feeling peaky? Fit of the peaks?”

“May, I don’t know what peaky means.”

“Me neither, but you look it.” She frowns and presses a hand to his forehead. “No fever. Have you been staying out past curfew? Because I thought we had an agreement, Petey-Pie, that if you’re going to keep doing this—”

“I’m not,” he says, too tired to even feel exasperated. “It’s just…”

There is an inexplicable moment where he almost tells her everything. The words rise into his throat so fast he can actually feel them there, sharp and painful like they’re clawing to get out. He swallows them down.

“I just haven’t been sleeping very well,” he says. 

May gives him a long, hard look and then pulls him to her side in a one-armed hug. 

“You know how proud I am of you, right?” she says.

And that  _ really _ makes Peter’s throat hurt. The lie of omission starts to taste like acid in his mouth, so even though he doesn’t want to break the hug he does, reaching for his backpack.

“I know, Aunt May. Um, I have homework…”

But May puts a hand on his arm.

“What would you think about taking a day off?” she says. “I don’t have a shift tomorrow. I’ll call school, we’ll play hooky. Go see a play or something. We haven’t done that in forever.”

Peter raises an eyebrow. “Aunt May, are you suggesting truancy? Because I seem to remember that you were a  _ little _ upset about that very issue not six months ago.”

May play punches him on the shoulder. “That’s unsanctioned truancy, you punk,” she says. “I’ll be aiding and abetting this time.” Her smile fades and Peter can tell she is looking at the dark circles under his eyes. “Come on, hon. I’d really like to spend some time with you. It’s been a little while.”

Peter thinks of the StarkPhone in his back pocket, which hasn’t lit up since Bruce texted to check in on him that morning. He thinks of the shiny black specks that are no doubt multiplying exponentially in his bloodstream as they speak. He thinks, too, of the look on Aunt May’s face when he stumbled off of Quill’s ship a few months ago, and how he really, really hopes he never has to see that look again. 

“You’re a bad influence, May,” he says.

“I’m the best influence,” she says, pulling him into another hug. This time he doesn’t disentangle himself, but leans into it. “And one day you’ll be old enough to appreciate that.”

Peter really hopes she’s right.

* * *

 

They go to an off-Broadway production of some two-man show, the tickets to which they buy off a scalper on the street corner after a morning of street food and laughing at tourists. It’s one of the best days Peter can remember having outside of the Spider-Man suit in a long time, so good he doesn’t even mind that the show is terrible. It’s so bad it’s good, and he and May are still laughing about it when they emerge onto Times Square just in time to see Doc Oc come bursting out of the twentieth story of a high-rise, a screaming woman clutched in one of his massive mechanical arms. 

This is also terrible, but not in a  _ so bad it’s good _ kind of way. This is more of a  _ so bad it’s bad _ sort of situation.

Peter throws his arms over May’s head as glass rains down on the shrieking crowd, shoving her into the relative safety of a nearby alley before she can get trampled as people start to flee. She steadies herself on his arm and gives him a wide-eyed once-over.

“Peter, do you—?”

Peter pulls his sleeve back to reveal the suit. 

It’s not like he wanted to disobey Bruce and Dr. Strange. Really, he had no intention of it. But unfortunately, Peter lives in a world where grown men in robot octopus costumes come bursting out of high rises, and when that’s your reality, it’s kind of silly  _ not _ to be prepared. 

May presses her lips together, takes a deep breath, and then kisses Peter on the forehead.

“You be careful,” she says, “or I’ll give you something way worse than that maniac to worry about.”

Peter squeezes her hand and tries not to notice how she is clearly suppressing her own terror as he pulls the mask out of his pocket and webs his way out of the alley. 

He’s so caught up in the adrenaline of the moment he forgets that he has been unequivocally warned against engaging in battles with armed supervillains until Doc Oc manages to catch him across the chest with one of those mechanical arms of his. It knocks the wind out of him, but more importantly it knocks the sense  _ into _ him: he can already feel the bruise forming underneath the fabric of his suit and suddenly he remembers something Dr. Strange might have shouted at him about internal bleeding.

But unfortunately, the woman is still in Doc Oc’s claw. Still screaming. So as much as Peter would like to go home and nurse his aching chest, he has to go with plan B: try not to get hit.

It doesn’t take Peter long to remember that this is  _ always _ his plan; he’s just never been very good at following it. He is especially bad at following it when he’s so fatigued he could take a nap, right here, right in the middle of this fight.By the time he manages to get the woman out of the bad guy’s clutches he’s already taken more swipes than even he is used to, and he’s more than ready to wrap this up, thank you very much.

Unfortunately, Doc Oc is not satisfied to go out quietly when the woman is reclaimed: instead, he switches targets, and goes after Peter. Because of course he does.

It has certain advantages: Peter is able to lead him away from crowded areas by slinging webs left and right and swinging hard. The disadvantage: he is now so tired he’s pretty sure that as soon as he stops running and starts fighting, Doc Oc is going to turn him into a puddle of red and blue jell-o. 

“You think you can foil me, Spider-Man?” Doc Oc roars as he rips chunks of concrete out of buildings, scuttling after his quarry. “Small-minded men like you have tried to stamp out scientific thinkers for centuries, and they haven’t succeeded either! History will—”

“Can we please  _ not _ with the corny monologuing?” Peter calls over his shoulder as he narrowly dodges another blow. “I’m normally all for hearing your stupid plots and whatever—makes them way easier to ‘foil,’ by the way—but I really have  _ such _ a headache right now, man.”

A mechanical arm crashes into the wall mere inches from Peter’s head and he yelps, scurrying out of the way just in time. 

“Your insolence will be your downfall!” Doc Oc screams.

“Y’know, you might have a point there,” says Peter. “I’m actually breaking a pretty important— _ ahh _ —promise by being— _ uff _ —here, so maybe we could both take a breather, cool down, reconvene at a later— _ augh _ !”

Peter leaps out of the way of another arm, but he misjudges his jump; instead of landing on the opposite building, he finds himself falling through the air. But before he can activate his web shooters—

He’s flying. It’s very disorienting, this sudden flight, and so it takes him a second to realize that there are metal hands under his armpits, facilitating it, and another second to realize who those hands belong to.

“Hey kid,” says Tony, his voice slightly mechanized by the suit’s filters, “having fun?”

Tony discards Peter on a nearby rooftop—not roughly, but Peter stumbles anyway; the brief seconds of not fighting have stripped the last of his adrenaline, and now he feels like he’s been hit by a train. Strike that; he feels like a _normal_ _kid_ who’s been hit by a train.

But he can’t let Mr. Stark see that. Peter regains his footing as fast as he can and puffs his chest out, ready to ask if Tony is actually there, but before he can, the man himself steps right out of the suit.

“Good afternoon, Starshine,” he says. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“We have to go back,” Peter says, “that guy was ripping up Manhattan, he—”

“Yeah, I’ve got people on it, buckaroo, and they’re handling it a teensy bit better than you were.”

Peter looks over Tony’s shoulder, to where the fight is continuing in the distance. He can see someone flying around Doc Oc’s head, and a reddish glow—Wanda and Sam, apparently. To Peter’s displeasure, Tony is right; they’ve been there less than a minute and they practically have him subdued. 

He returns his attention to Tony. 

He’s not dressed in one of his usual suits. He is, in fact, wearing sweatpants and a tank top, which Peter knows to be his workshop outfit, but he still somehow manages to make it look suave. Peter expects to see anger on his face, or maybe irritation, but instead there is a slight furrow in Tony’s brow, a frown on his lips that is not unkind in the least. He looks, in short, worried.

And all at once, something hot and violent and unexpected flares in Peter’s chest. He’s waited months— _ months _ —to hear something, anything from Tony, and now here he is looking  _ concerned _ ? If he’s so damn worried, why hasn’t he picked up the phone? Why hasn’t he reached out, even one stupid time?

“I thought you took the tracker out of my new suit.” Peter snaps, and it’s so virulent that Tony’s eyes go wide. “Or was that just another lie?”

“Uh, hate to be the one to break this to you, but you’re headlining the four o’clock news.” 

He gestures to the sky. There are four helicopters weaving through the nearby buildings, three of them trained on the ongoing fight but one of them pointed in Peter and Tony’s direction. Peter is grateful he’s still wearing his mask, because underneath it he can feel his face go red, accompanied by a potent wave of lightheadedness, which he swallows down. 

“So what, you have an alert set for whenever I’m in a fight? Because in case you haven’t noticed, I can handle myself just fine. I’ve been doing it for months.”

Tony’s own expression is going from bemused to exasperated, with a touch of irritation, but instead of making Peter back down, it fills him with a savage pleasure and a renewed desire to fight.

“I have an alert set for any time someone on my team is getting their ass handed to them,” Tony says, “which was clearly the case here. What was that, kid? I haven’t seen you fight that sloppily since before I met you, are you—”

“I’m not a kid!” Peter shouts.

And, incredibly, Tony shuts his mouth. 

There is a pause, while Peter breathes like a winded bull and Tony looks down at him through narrowed eyes.

“Clearly I’m missing something here, ki—Pete,” he says. 

There’s no malice in his voice. Peter doesn’t care.

“Yeah?” he says, “You think you might be  _ missing something,  _ Mr. Stark? ‘Cuz it seems to me you don’t care too much about what you miss. Seems to me like you don’t care at all. You haven’t called me, or texted me, or even just asked if I’m okay in  _ months _ . Months! Do you have any idea what that’s even like, after what—”

He snaps his own mouth shut abruptly, because no way, he is not about to be so melodramatic as to actually say  _ after what I went through _ to Tony Freaking Stark.

Tony seems to get it anyway. There’s an expression on his face. An expression that Peter hasn’t seen there before, but one he recognizes all the same. It says,  _ This is exactly what I was afraid was going to happen, which is why I’ve been avoiding you. _ It says,  _ You shouldn’t have brought this up, you little nincompoop, because in case you didn’t take the hint, I don’t want to talk about it. _

Reading all this, Peter almost takes it back. But he doesn’t. He spreads his stance and draws himself to his full height, wishing for the millionth time in his life that it was a just a little higher. 

Tony takes a deep breath, all the muscles in his chest blowing out like a hot air balloon, and says,

“Peter, there are things about… about everything that happened that you just aren’t old enough to understand.”

Peter is so gobsmacked by this that he actually steps back. 

“Yeah?” he says. “Which parts are those?”

“The parts that you’re too young for,” Mr. Stark snaps, and it seems his patience has run out. “You think just because you’ve seen some spaceships you know  _ anything  _ about what we’re fighting against every day? You think just because Thanos is gone our work is over? You’re out here getting beat up by the Friday Evening Creature Feature twice a week and you think that means you know something, but some of us are still dealing with those threats, Pete, and since that  _ some of us _ is me, I don’t exactly appreciate being lectured on it by a Teeny Bopper in red pajamas. Especially not when I just saved that Teeny Bopper’s ass.”

“Go and deal with it then!” Peter shouts. “You’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t give a crap about leaving me alone, so why don’t you just freaking do it? You go handle all the real threats and I’ll stay here with the monsters and villains and deal with the fact that  _ I’m the one who died _ so you don’t have to, how about that?”

All of the color drains out of Tony’s face. It’s swift and total and frightening, and it takes all of Peter’s anger with it, hot air leaving in a rush. 

Peter sways, opening his mouth to apologize, but Tony cuts across him.

“You think you’re so prepared for what the world is gonna throw at you?” he says. “For what the  _ universe _ is gonna throw at you? Fine. It’s all yours to handle, kid. I’m done.”

And before Peter has even worked out what just happened, Tony re-engages the suit and blasts off.

Peter watches him disappear into the skyline and then stands still, his hands clenched at his sides, shaking with anger and disbelief and—and—

And oh, yeah. An alien virus. The one that’s chewing up his red blood cells, and because of which he is not supposed to raise his blood pressure.

Peter staggers, but he manages to keep his feet. He’s suddenly hot all over, and his skin feels like it’s crawling with bugs. He desperately wants to get out of the mask, but the helicopter's lights are still trained on him and so, slowly, he makes his way to the edge of the roof and climbs down the fire escape, waiting until his vision stops swimming before he slowly swings his way to somewhere safe and secluded. 

Alone in an abandoned alley, Peter rips of his mask, and is rewarded with a shower of blood. His nose is bleeding, fast and ferocious, and it takes a full ten minutes of pinching it and swearing before it stops, by which time the entire front of his suit is drenched in it. 

There’s no way he’s going to be able to hide this from May. He doesn’t have a change of clothes, and he knows she’ll be waiting up for him after what happened in Times Square. 

Peter swallows, the taste of blood and unshed tears of frustration thick in his mouth, and slowly begins to make his way home.


	3. The Lie

“You have a news alert, Peter.”

Karen’s disembodied voice gives Peter a start: he’d almost forgotten he was wearing the mask. But of course he’d had to put it back on; the only thing worse than arriving home covered in blood would be arriving home covered in blood without his secret identity intact.

The mask is especially necessary because Peter is too exhausted to web-sling. He’s made it most of the way by hitching a ride on top of the E Train, but now he’s walking, doing his best to stay in the lengthening shadows and throwing awkward finger guns whenever someone shouts some variation of, “Hey, Spidey! Sorry Doc Oc kicked your ass!” at him.

“Yeah, I kinda figured, Karen, and I don’t really—”

But Karen is already flashing the headline on Peter’s display, and it’s not, as Peter suspected based on the street shouters, “Doc Oc Kicks Spidey’s Ass.”

“ _FURTHER DISCORD AMONGST AVENGERS?_ ” the headline screams, followed by the subheading: “Spider-Man and Iron Man have rooftop screaming match after battling costumed villain.”

Peter groans, but it only gets worse from there; Karen, unbidden, begins to scroll through the headlines as other news outlets snatch up the story and roll with it. _The Bugle_ is probably the worst (“Arachnid Affair? Tony Stark and Spider-Menace Engage in Lover’s Quarrel while Maniac Destroys Midtown”) but none of it exactly fills Peter with warm fuzzy feeling, and by the time he tells Karen to please stop filling him in, he’s really regretting setting that stupid news alert in the first place.

At least, he thinks as he wearily climbs the wall of a building adjacent to their apartment, the night can’t get any worse.

But, as he has always suspected it does, the universe punishes cliché thoughts in cliché ways. Just as he’s about to make the jump between rooftops, it gets worse.

“Bruce Banner is calling you,” says Karen cheerfully, and before Peter can splutter his objections, she takes it upon herself to patch him through.

“Don’t—heeyy, Dr. B.”

Bruce is video calling, and the look on his face makes Peter extra glad that he cannot see Peter’s, which is starting to feel itchy from all the dried blood.

“Oh good,” says Bruce, and even though he is going for irony, his voice sounds pinched with worry, “you’re alive.”

“Hooray,” says Peter. He sits on the ledge of the rooftop. “Totally alive. Look, I’m really sorry—”

“I’m just—hold on a second, Pete, because I’m trying to figure out where I was unclear about the fact that you should not, under any circumstances, be fighting crime in your current condition. Was it the ‘absolutely not’ that made you think it was okay? Or was it the ‘seriously, you could die’? Please tell me where I went wrong.”

Peter sighs. “I didn’t mean to,” he says plaintively, “but what was I supposed to do, let that weirdo kill a bunch of people? My aunt was there, I wasn’t about to let that happen.”

Bruce takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, and just generally looks so stressed-out that Peter actually holds his breath for a second, because it looks like Bruce is in a lab or some sort and Peter really doesn’t want to be responsible for the destruction of all that expensive equipment if Bruce Hulks out because of him.

But when Bruce speaks, he sounds tired but even.

“You’re supposed to tell people, so we know to have extra eyes on you. Extra help. There was no reason it should have taken them that long to get to you. There was no reason you should have had to fight at all.”

“I told you.”

“And I don’t have a great record in highly populated urban areas. I’m not the one to turn to when someone needs to tap in on a battle, Pete. Did you at least tell Tony?”

“Uhh. Sort of?”

“Peter…”

“Look, if he was reading between the lines at all, he definitely picked up on it. I mean, what part of ‘ _never speak to me again_ ’ doesn’t scream, ‘ _I have a space virus that’s slowly turning my blood into watered-down maple syrup’_?”

Bruce gives him a look that is so pitying and worried that it makes Peter want to start shouting all over again.

“So you did get into a fight? It’s—ah—it’s all over the news.”

Peter swallows hard, hesitating until he’s sure his voice will be even before he replies.

“I may have lost my temper a tiny bit,” he admits. “But rumors of our affair are highly exaggerated.”

“Kid, it’s understandable that you’re on edge. I’m sure if you just talked to him, Tony would—”

“Have you heard anything from Dr. Strange?” Peter interrupts, and curses himself when his voice cracks just a tiny bit.

Bruce frowns. “Nothing yet,” he says. “But I’ve been working on something myself. It’s not a permanent fix, but it’ll be more effective than the supplements alone.”

“Great,” says Peter, “I’ll come pick it up after school tomorrow—”

“No,” says Bruce firmly. “I’m coming down there tonight. Never mind that we have to stay on top of this. We had a deal, Pete. I’m going to have to talk to your aunt.”

Peter sighs, but he has no fight left in him on that front. He’s been mentally preparing to do it himself since the Great Nose Explosion of 2018.

“Yeah,” he says, “I kinda figured. But—you’re still not gonna tell Tony, right?”

“Peter, you need people in your corner. You need—”

“He’s not in my corner,” Peter snaps. “He’s actually very uninterested in my corner. He just said so himself.”

There is a long pause.

“I guess I don’t exactly have the moral high ground to tell you how to handle your—ah—your temper. Or to tell Tony your business. But for what it’s worth, Pete, I know he cares a lot about you.”

“Sure,” says Peter. “Look, I gotta go, my aunt is probably plotting my eternal grounding as we speak… and I guess I should talk to her before you get here.”

Bruce nods tightly, still looking unbearably worried.

“See you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Peter, and he disconnects the call.

There is a small chance that Peter will be able sneak in the window and into the bathroom before May can see the worst of the blood—hence the building hopping. But it’s not meant to be; the second he peers over the windowsill May spots him from where she is sitting on his bed, and she jumps to her feet to open the window.

“Hey, May,” he says, and he crawls in to greet her.

May looks pale and anxious, but physically unhurt, which is a relief. It’s honestly kind of his worst nightmare that she’ll get caught up in an incident like the one today: even if he does have to tell her about the virus, at the least it’s worth it that he was able to get her out of there safely.

May pulls him into a hug.

“Thank goodness you’re home,” she says. “I was getting so worried, I saw you on the news but that was over an hour ago… what took you so long to get home?”

“I just—”

But before he can come up with an excuse, she holds him at arm’s length and looks him up and down. The red of his suit covers the worst of the bloodstain, but whatever respite that grants him is short-lived; the very first thing May does is reach up and pull off his mask.

“Oh, _honey_ ,” she breathes.

“It looks much more _Friday the Thirteenth_ than it is,” Peter mumbles. “Seriously, I just took a claw to the face. It’s not the first time. Remember when Uncle Ben took us to Red Lobster and tried to teach me how to use the shell crackers? This was way less dramatic.”

“Sit down,” May commands. “Wait here.”

Peter doesn’t object. He stumbles over to the bed, but waits until May is out the bedroom door and in the kitchen before falling back onto it and putting his hand over his eyes.

He feels sick. There’s no other way to put it—it’s just that blunt, just that all-encompassing. He’s still hot all over, woozier than he was immediately after the fight, and he knows that if he let himself drift off now he could easily sleep through the night and possibly the day tomorrow, and it’s barely six o’clock in the evening.

But there’s work left to do. Terrible, gut-wrenching work.

May returns, carrying a bowl of warm water and a washcloth in one hand, a fistful of ibuprofen and a cup of Dr. Pepper—Peter’s drink of choice when he was sick as a kid—in the other. He sits up, trying to hide how much of an effort it is, and takes the ibuprofen first. Through a lot of trial and error they’ve figured out a dose that actually has a small effect on his post-pummeling aches and pains, though since it is “enough to kill a baby elephant,” as May puts it, they try to limit it to the worst nights. He must look bad, if May is offering without prompting.

While he takes little sips of the Dr. Pepper, May sets to work wiping off his face, peering into his eyes while he avoids hers.

“Peter,” she says, “are you okay?”

This is it. Peter knows he has to tell her everything, but it’s the opposite of what happened yesterday. Instead of rising to his throat, the words feel like they are sinking in his chest, like his lungs are made of quicksand.

“That’s a stupid question,” May says, and Peter’s eyes dart up, his heart racing. “I can tell you’re not. I can tell you haven’t been for a while now. Honey” —Peter braces himself— “what happened with you and Tony? Did you really get into a fight?”

Peter swallows, his insides writhing with nerves, but somehow he is relieved. Suddenly he wants to put off talk of viruses and potential slow demises— _no, don’t go there you’re going to be fine you just have to wait it out and the Guardians will get back with the cure—_ as long as he possibly can. Even if that means talking to his aunt about Tony Stark.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” he mutters. “I just… got kind of mad at him.”

“For… coming to help with the octopus guy?”

Peter shakes his head.

“No, that was… I probably needed the help.” He laughs weakly. “It’s just, he hasn’t really talked to me in a while about… about Spider-Man stuff. Or at all. And when he just showed up like that and acted like nothing happened, I just—I don’t know. It was stupid, it’s not like I have a right to expect—”

“What do you mean?” says May, and suddenly her voice is sharp. “What do you mean he hasn’t talked to you _at all_? I thought he was helping you with everything? You told me he made you that suit, right?”

Peter is taken aback. There is a fire in May’s eyes, blazing and bright and all at once, and Peter feels like a little kid as he shrinks away from the heat of it.

“I mean, yeah, he made the suit, but he’s, y’know, he’s busy a lot of the time… May, he’s Tony Stark, he’s got other things—”

“I’m gonna kill him.”

May gets to her feet and strides into the kitchen with such purposefulness that Peter, in spite of his exhaustion, gets to his feet and follows her.

She reaches for something on the counter. For one wild moment he thinks she is going for the bread knife; instead, she picks up her cell phone.

“Woah!” Peter almost goes for his web shooters on instinct, but thankfully remembers that to do so would guarantee his own eternal banishment from anything remotely related to an extracurricular, including but not limited to Spider-Man. “Uh, May, what are you doing?”

“I’m calling him,” she says bluntly.

“Nope! No, no, no, no,” says Peter, reaching for the phone. She snatches it out of the way. “May, you absolutely cannot call _Tony Stark_ to—to yell at him for not paying enough attention to me!”

Never mind that Peter did the same thing less than two hours ago. It’s one thing to yell at a billionaire superhero when he’s just pulled you out of a fight with a mechanically-enhanced bad guy; it’s another thing entirely when your aunt does it for you, particularly when she is standing in her tiny kitchen, wearing the very same “I Survived My Trip to New York City!” t-shirt said billionaire once got you as punishment for blowing up a ferry. Never mind, either, that May rocks the shirt in a way Peter never could (he can’t do ironic dorkiness, only the real kind): the humiliation is too much to bear.

“No!” says May. “Peter, listen to me; that’s not okay. He’s not allowed to just abandon you out there. Never mind that he pulled you into this whole mess—”

“He didn’t, May, I was doing this before he ever—”

“—it’s also just wrong! It’s wrong to—to get you invested, to yank you into all his stupid stunts and then—what? He just leaves you on a rooftop covered in blood? Peter, that’s not acceptable behavior! Not from anyone, but especially not from someone who is supposed to be looking out for you!”

“May, I’m not four years old, I don’t need you to—to fight my battles for me, I’m—”

“This isn’t up for discussion, Peter! He needs to know that it’s not okay, and if he isn’t going to listen to you, he’s sure as hell going to listen to me.”

“May, I’m begging you, _please_ just let it go. It doesn’t matter, I’m totally fine, and—”

“I’m actually gonna have to side with your aunt on this one, kid.”

May and Peter both jump and turn toward the front door.

For a second Peter thinks the virus must have progressed to some new, unforeseen stage where it causes surreal hallucinations. Because he could swear Tony Stark is standing in their doorway, wearing the same sweatpants he was on the rooftop but with a hoodie pulled over his top half, now, and something that is as close to a sheepish look as Peter has ever seen him wear. Which just… cannot be right.

“You know you leave your door unlocked?” says Tony. “Maybe not the best idea. Anyone could just walk in.”

May recovers before Peter does.

“I leave my front door unlocked any time my sixteen-year-old kid is out fighting insane old men in his high-tech tracksuit,” she says, advancing on him, “especially when the insane old man who made it for him dumps him on a rooftop and flies away like a child throwing a tantrum.”

“ _May_!” says Peter.

Tony flinches, wrinkles his nose, and then sighs.

“As always, May, though I hate to admit it, you make a valid point,” he says. “You make several valid points. Which, believe me, is not something I say often to angry, attractive women hellbent on removing my—actually, what am I talking about? This is a weekly occurrence for me.” He sighs again. “The point is, I’m not here to justify any of” —he waves a hand distastefully— “the stuff you just shouted. It’s all correct.”

“Then _why_ are you here?” May snaps.

Tony gives Peter a shifty glance and Peter, who is just recovering from his shock enough to begin to feel absolutely and irrevocably mortified, goes as red as his suit and says nothing.

Tony looks back at May. “Can I—uh… is there any way I could have a word with Peter?”

“You know, I’m really not sure how I feel about that, Tony.”

“May.”

They both look at Peter. There must be something in his face—maybe it’s the bone-deep tiredness he’s been battling all night—because May’s expression softens, while Tony’s frown deepens.

Peter slumps.

“May, it’s fine. I’m just gonna talk to him for a minute, okay?”

May narrows her eyes and looks back at Tony. She doesn’t say anything, but Tony reads the expression on her face as well as Peter does. He nods.

May pauses only to cup Peter’s cheek affectionately, glare at Tony one last time, and then she disappears into her room.   

Peter and Tony stand, twelve feet apart and silent, for an awkward beat.

“So you actually are covered in blood,” says Tony, nodding at Peter’s chest.

He’s still wearing the Spider-Man suit. Thank goodness May cleaned his face off.  

“Yeah,” says Peter. “And by the way, the whole dry-clean-only feature on this suit is super inconvenient. You’d think you’d have thought that one through when you designed it.”

It’s a lame joke, but Tony smiles a little.

“I’ll bring it up next time you drop by R&D,” he says. Frowns again. “I didn’t notice that on the rooftop. Looks like I haven’t been noticing a lot of things lately. Can we, uh…” He gestures at the living room. “I get antsy if I have to stand while I apologize to teenagers after being scolded by their adult guardians. Boarding school flashbacks.”

Peter follows him and tenderly lowers himself into an armchair while Tony takes the couch. He’s starting to feel those bruises.

“You okay, kid?” says Tony, nodding once again to the blood stains.

“It was just a bloody nose. It stopped pretty quick,” Peter lies, mumbling.

“I don’t just mean the blood. You look… burdened.”

Peter shrugs.

Another pause. Tony clears his throat.

“So… that was probably not my finest moment back there. Not my worst by any stretch—Miami Beach in ninety-five springs to mind, and don’t Google that by the way—but not something I’m proud of.”

Peter shrugs again. “I started it,” he says. “I’m honestly more upset that half of New York thinks we’re in love now.”

“I _am_ going to buy _The Bugle_ and turn it into a fifteen-story hot dog stand, in case you were worried.”

Peter manages a little smile. “I wouldn’t go that far, Mr. Stark. I hear they pay good money for pictures of Spider-Man, I’ve been thinking—”

“Ugh, do _not_ go the self-pimping route, Parker, take it from a man who has been there and done that far too many times in his life. If you need cash we can talk about turning that internship you’re always lying about into a real gig. But stop changing the subject. I’m trying for contrition here, and it’s uncomfortable enough without your interruptions.”

Peter looks at his hands.

“Look,” he says, “I’m sorry I lost my temper back there. I know you have a lot going on and—”

“Jesus, didn’t I just say that _I_ was the one going for contrition? Look at me, kid.”

Reluctantly, Peter does.

But Tony doesn’t look angry. He looks tired and worried, just like Bruce did on the phone. Tony ducks his head to get a better look at Peter’s face and he sighs.

“Peter, you didn’t say anything on that roof that wasn’t true.”

Peter perks up, surprised, and Tony goes on.

“I have been avoiding you.”

“Oh,” says Peter, trying not to let the sinking feeling that hearing it out loud produces enter his voice, “that’s—um, I mean, I know—”

“I’m not here to make excuses, Peter. I’m here to apologize for it. And to apologize for trying to make it seem like it was your fault. You’re not too young. Or—hell, obviously you are too young, but that doesn’t make a difference, you’re in this whether I like it or not. You’re not too young to understand, is the point, and you do. You get this… messed up world better than most adults I know, and the fact that you haven’t let it screw you up even a little bit is more impressive than anything I’ve ever done.”  

Peter’s mouth falls open. Just for a second, but managing to close it is about as much of a rejoinder as he manages. Tony nods, like it’s exactly what he was expecting.

“I think the only thing,” he says, slowly, like he’s choosing his words carefully, “that you don’t understand is—ah—well, that would be me, kid. You’d think after ten years of doing this crap I’d have learned to handle myself better. And I’ll give myself credit in certain areas but… I think what happened out there was beyond me. It was beyond what I could have… what anyone could prepare for. I just… seeing you like that, thinking you were… it was…”

Peter swallows hard as Tony trails off. This is it—everything he’s been wanting Tony to admit for months—and all at once, he realizes he doesn’t need to hear it.

“It’s okay, Mr. Stark,” he says. “I don’t think anyone could have prepared for that. I get it.”

Tony sucks in a long, deep breath through his nose.

“I don’t know if you do, Pete. I don’t know if it’s possible to even describe it, or if it’s fair to try, but… look. I’m about to expend about a year’s worth of emotional energy in one sitting, so pay attention, because the whole childhood wounding bullshit is probably going to spring back into action at any second.” He swallows. “Pete, when I think about what we’re fighting for out there… you’re it, kid.”

Peter swallows again, too, harder this time, because that knife-like sensation is back in his throat and nope, no way is he going to cry right now.

“That’s a little myopic of you, don’t you think Mr. Stark?” he says.

“Don’t be a little shit,” says Tony. It’s affectionate. “You’re smarter than is good for you, you know exactly what I’m talking about. When I think about the future—the future that all of us have made—you’re just about the only thing that makes me hopeful. You’re gonna be the best of all of us someday, kid. And as proud as I am of that—and I am… _really_ proud of you, kid—it also scares the hell out of me. I didn’t handle that fear well this time. I’m sorry.”

And that’s it. Peter can’t help it; he feels a tear well up in his right eye and he turns his head, quickly, to catch it on his sleeve. He knows Mr. Stark sees but, thankfully, he says nothing until Peter has regained himself enough to turn back to face him.

“I’m gonna try harder, okay kid?”

Peter nods. Because if he opens his mouth he might just spill the real reason he is crying, and he has just decided that he is unequivocally, unquestionably, _not_ going to tell Tony that the “one thing that gives him hope” is currently swimming with a potentially deadly virus.

The Guardians will know what to do. They have to. And until they get back to him, there is absolutely no point in sending Tony back to whatever dark place he’s been inhabiting for the last few months.

“So… no time like the present,” says Tony, who, true to his word, seems to have expended all of his emotional energy and is starting to look distinctly awkward. “How have you been? Are you… coping okay?”

No time like the present indeed. Peter gets straight to the lie.

“Oh, you know,” he says. “AP Calculus kind of sucks, but at least it puts all the space fighting and alien monsters into perspective.”

Tony laughs. The sound is such a relief that Peter does, too.

Before they can decide to continue the levity or swerve back towards more serious bonding, there is a knock at the door.

May emerges from her bedroom as Tony gets to his feet, still frowning but looking less angry—she must have heard the laughter—and goes to answer it before either of them can.

“Oh,” she says, sounding, for the first time tonight, genuinely surprised. “Hi. Aren’t you—um—Bruce Banner?”

Peter’s eyes go wide and he leaps to his feet. As surprised as he was to see Tony, he completely forgot that Bruce was coming. Over May’s shoulder, Bruce looks equally taken aback; clearly he was not expecting to see Tony here, either. He and Peter lock eyes and Peter shakes his head frantically, stopping abruptly when Tony turns to look at him with his own eyes narrowed.

“Oh, hey Dr. Banner,” says Tony, his voice oozing with suspicion, still squinting at Peter. “Fancy seeing you here.”

May steps aside and lets Bruce enter awkwardly. He’s clutching a brown paper bag, which he moves behind his back in the most obvious manner possible as Tony turns his accusatory glare toward him.

“Hey, Tony,” says Bruce, clearly at a loss. “I’m just here to uh…”

“Science project!” Peter squeaks.

Everyone turns to look at him.

Peter swallows, willing his voice deeper as he says again, “It’s a science project. Um… effects of radiation on small-celled organisms. I’m so sorry, I totally forgot you were coming Dr. B. I meant to tell you, May.”

“Yeah? Slipped your mind, huh, Pete?” says Tony. “Funny, you never come to _me_ for help with your science projects.”

Peter tries to shrug nonchalantly and somehow manages to make it look like he has a bad nervous twitch.

“Sorry, Mr. Stark. But you know, when a guy has access to Bruce Banner for his bio project…”

Tony and May share a glance now, and while they are distracted Bruce gives Peter a wide-eyed look that clearly says, _Are you freaking kidding me here?_

Peter makes a slicing motion across his throat, drops it quickly when May turns to look at him with eyebrows raised.

“Peter, love, I like to think I’m a pretty cool aunt, but I can only handle so many famous scientists in my apartment on a night when I haven’t done laundry.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Peter scurries around Tony and snatches the bag out of Bruce’s hands before he can say anything else. “Thanks for the cell samples, Dr. B, sorry you came all the way down here, but I think maybe tonight’s not the best night for us to, um, go over the project so maybe we should, like, reschedule or something.”

To Peter’s great relief, May says. “I’m gonna second that. Sorry, guys, but I have a battered teenager here who needs some serious sleep. Whatever this weirdness is can wait until morning. Tony, are you two finished?”

“We are indeed,” says Tony, but he’s still alternating between his examination of Peter and his examination of Bruce. “You drive up, Bruce? I’ll snag a ride, if it’s not inconvenient. I only took the suit, and I’d kinda like to lay low considering the night’s headlines. Pep’ll kill me if she thinks she’s been replaced by Dougie Howser over there.”

“Uh, sure,” says Bruce, who still looks like he’s trying to work out what just happened. “I’m parked on the street.”

“Plus,” says Tony, “you can tell me all about this little science project on the way.”

Behind Tony’s back, Peter mouths, _Please._

Bruce purses his lips for just a second, then fixes his face into neutral under Tony’s scrutiny.

“Yup,” he says, “eleventh grade biology is just about your speed, isn’t it, Tony?”

“About as much as it is yours,” says Tony. He turns to Pete, who tries for an innocent smile. “You know, Pete, I’m a little insulted you _didn’t_ come to me. Did you know he doesn’t even have a medical degree?”

The look on Bruce’s face at that is almost worth the one he gives Peter as he follows Tony out the door, miming a phone and mouthing, _This isn’t finished_ as he does.

The door closes behind them and May lets out a huff of air, like she has been holding her breath for hours.

“Is this my life now, Peter?” she says, turning back to him. “Is this just going to be what’s considered normal for the rest of my days?”

Peter shrugs, grinning guiltily.

“For the rest of mine, at least.”

“Oh God. When do you start college again?” She pulls him into a quick hug, kisses him on the temple, and says, “Let’s get you in the shower, kiddo. I was serious about that rest, you’re going straight to bed.”

And Peter trails after her into the bathroom, trying not to think of college, or Bruce’s warning, or the rest of his life which, minute by minute, is starting to feel ever more like it might not last very long.


	4. The Truth

Peter wakes to a wheedling buzz. He’s hot all over. It takes him a moment to orient himself, and to realize that the buzz is his phone. When he does, he fumbles for a second, trying to find it in the bed beside him, and immediately hits the button on the side to turn it off.

The phone goes silent. Peter lays face-down, dreading the moment he has to move, but now that he’s awake he’s more aware of the fact that he has half a pillow practically stuffed in his mouth: eventually the need for air wins out over the need for stillness, and he rolls over.

It’s exactly as painful as he imagined it would be. The bruises from his battle with Doc Oc have set in overnight, swelling and causing his limbs to stiffen, so he actually has to suppress a groan from this small effort. Did he think he felt like he’d been hit by a train yesterday? That was Thomas the Tank Engine, chugging along at a strolling pace. Whatever train mowed him down while he slept was probably one of those Japanese bullet things, travelling at a thousand miles an hour. He feels like he’s been dismembered.

His phone buzzes again. Peter rejects it again.

He lifts his head. It’s too bright to be six o’clock, which is when he usually wakes for school, but he only has to panic about this for a second: there is a sticky note taped to the upper bunk, directly in his eyeline, which is how May leaves missives when he is still in bed.

 _Sleep!_ the note says. _You’ve earned another day (but don’t make it a habit). I have a late shift so I’ll see you tonight. Money on counter for pizza, etc. Love love love you._

Peter blinks at the note for a long time, because it takes a full five minutes before his groggy mind can comprehend what it says. Once he does, however, his eyes slide closed again. He feels like he could cry with gratitude. He could probably stay in bed for the next year and not regret a minute of it.

But apparently, rest is not for the weary. His phone buzzes a third time, insistent, and this time Peter lifts it to his ear with a bleary, “Hello?”

“Peter!” On the other end, Bruce sounds almost wrecked with relief. “What the hell? I’ve been trying to call you all morning, I was about to come look for you myself! Where are you?”

“Oh, hey Dr. B.” Peter once again tries to lift his head, to check the alarm clock on his bedside table, but it falls limply back like his neck is a wet noodle. He can’t even keep his eyes open. “M’okay, I’ve just been asleep. What time is it?”

“It’s just past noon.” Bruce’s voice is tight with worry. “You must have been asleep since at least nine last night, I tried to call you when we got back to the compound.”

This stirs something in the back of Peter’s mind, some memory that has a faint nervous anticipation attached to it, but he can’t bring it to the forefront, turn it into words. He feels swirly and off-kilter, like he’s rocking on a boat instead of lying flat on his very solid bed.

He drifts.

“—eter! Peter, can you hear me?”

Peter jolts. He didn’t even realize Bruce was still talking until he starts shouting, his voice tinny and anxious in Peter’s ear.

“Sorry,” Peter mumbles. “Sorry, sorry. Wha—wha’ were you sayin’?”

“Peter, I need you to listen to me very carefully, okay? Where’s the bag I left at your place last night? The little paper bag?”

Peter winces, trying to file the question in whatever part of his brain will give it some meaning. This happens very slowly.

“I think… my desk.”

“I need you to get it, Pete. Can you do that?”

“I’m… I will, Dr. B, promise, I think I’m just… gonna sleep a little longer…”

“No, Peter. Now. Or I’ll call Tony down here and tell him everything, do you understand?”

Oh. That’s where the anxiousness from the night before comes from. Peter has some vague memory of Tony sitting on his couch, but he can’t grasp it beyond that image. He does recognize the feeling it creates in the pit of his stomach, though.

“Dirty play, Dr. Baaa—mmph.”

The rest of his objection is swallowed by a yawn, but it doesn’t matter. Bruce has his attention. He’s so sleepy he can barely see, but he pries his eyes open anyway and slowly, slowly, pushes himself out of bed, stifling the groans and gasps that come along with the movement.

Peter staggers over to his desk with the phone still pressed to his ear, drops into the chair, and puts his head down, groping blindly with his free hand until he hears the crinkle of paper.

“Nngh,” he says, to signify his victory.

“Okay, there are five auto-injectors in there—”

“Hate needles,” Peter mumbles.

“Just do it, Peter, please. You’ve seen epi-pens, right? This is the same deal. Just take the cap off and stick it in your thigh, then hold for ten seconds. Can you do that? Pete? Peter?”

“Okay, okay.”

Peter forces himself to sit up. He sets the phone aside, needing both hands to even come close to the amount of dexterity necessary to remove one of the tubes, pop the cap off, and steady it over his right thigh. Peter groans again, but he’s too foggy to really recognize what he’s about to do. He plunges the needle in.

There is a small, sharp pain, followed by a swoop in his stomach, like the one he gets when he web-slings from a very high height. All at once everything comes rushing back—the fight with Tony, the reconciliation, Bruce’s promise that he would call him—and the virus, of course the virus, because that’s what all this comes back to, this terrifying fatigue and all the lies and the worry and—

“Peter!”

Even without the phone to his ear, Peter can hear Bruce calling his name. He scrambles to pick it up, breathing like he’s just run a marathon.

“Woah, Dr. B,” he says. “Whatever’s in that thing _cannot_ be legal.”

Peter can practically hear Bruce slump with relief.

“Jesus, kid, my heart,” he says. “You’d better not do that again, or you might be getting a visit from the Big Guy next time.”

Peter swallows. Now that he’s awake, he recognizes why Bruce sounded so flustered before, and the fear is catching; if that phone call hadn’t woken him up… Peter doesn’t want to think about it.

“I like the Hulk,” he says, trying to hide the quaver in his voice.

“Yeah, and the Hulk likes you,” says Bruce. “Which is kind of the problem. You won’t like him when he’s protective.” A beat. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I just—what is this junk?”

He reaches in the paper bag for a full injector and holds it up to the light. The liquid inside is almost as black as the viral cells in his bloodstream, but murkier, not as shiny.

“Well, it’s not exactly FDA approved,” says Bruce. “It’ll boost your red blood cell production and hyper-oxygenate your blood. Basically it’s genetically-tailored blood doping in a tube.”

“Woah,” says Peter again. “Super cool, but I’m not sure how to feel about the whole performance-enhancing drugs, thing. Guys with radioactive spider DNA should at least fight fair, ya know?”

“It’s a temporary fix,” says Bruce, ignoring the banter. “I was hoping we might be able to hold off on using it, because I have no idea what side-effects to expect, but you probably sped this thing along with your stunt last night. It works in conjunction with your regular immune system, Pete, but that means there’s a chance it could trigger an autoimmune effect, and we _really_ don’t want that to happen. You’re going to have to come back in—”

“Hey, Dr. Banner, slow down. I’m still, ah, trying to wake up a little.”

He blinks hard, feeling his heart as it falls into a steady, even rhythm. When he looks down at his arms, they are peppered with dozens of tiny bruises and several larger ones, but before his eyes they begin to fade. Whatever shit they’ve given Bruce Banner in the past few days, Peter has to hand it to him: he knows his stuff.

“Peter,” says Bruce, after about thirty seconds have passed. “We can’t keep this up anymore. It’s been four days and there’s been no word from Strange. Never mind just telling your aunt; I think you need to come up here for permanent observation until we have a better plan to beat this thing, kid.”

Peter’s heart sinks, but he knows Bruce is right: the talk with Tony last night bought him some time, but based on this morning, he’s fooling himself if he thinks he can keep this secret for even another twenty-four hours. Even with Bruce’s medicine pumping through his veins, his heartbeat feels unnatural, almost forced.

“Did you, um, tell Mr. Stark?”

“No. But it was a task. That man is… persistent, to put it mildly, and he is concerningly unconcerned with the possibility of being trapped in a town car with the Hulk when he wants to push my buttons. He knows something is up, and all it’s going to take is a well-directed command to FRIDAY for him to figure out you were here for blood tests earlier this week. I think it’s going to be a lot better for both of us if we tell him before he figures it out for himself.”

“Yeah.” Peter puts his head back on the desk, this time to soothe the stress headache that is welling behind his right temple. “Yeah, I know. You’re right. Um, my aunt’s shift is over at seven. When she gets home I’ll have her drive me up.”

Bruce’s voice is considerably gentler, like he’s deliberately fighting the tension in it, when he says, “Do you want me to come help you talk to her?”

Peter shakes his head against the desk, remembers that Bruce can’t see him, and says, “Nah, Dr. B. I’ll… I think it’s better if I do that myself. But, um, can you wait until I’m there? To—to tell Mr. Stark?”

There’s a short pause. “Sure thing, kid. I’ll hold him off as long as I can, okay? And… Peter?”

“Mm?”

“You’re gonna be okay, all right? This is all precautionary. We’ll figure this out.”

“Yeah. I know.”

He must not sound very convincing, because Bruce says, “Peter—”

But before he can go on, the doorbell rings. Peter picks his head up.

“Hey, Dr. Banner, I gotta go. Someone’s at the door. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

“Okay, Pete, see you then.”

Peter hangs up as the doorbell rings again. He pauses long enough to throw on sweatpants and an old long-sleeved t-shirt that once belonged to Uncle Ben—because if Child Protective Services got involved that would just make things _complicated_ , God forbid—tuck the phone into his pocket, and then bumbles into the living room as it rings a third time.

“Okay, okay,” he says, opening the door. “Hold your—”

His eyebrows go up. Ned and MJ are standing in his doorway, Ned holding a stack of papers and three iced coffees, MJ a greasy bag of donuts.

“Waddup, Spider-Man?” says MJ, and she shoulders past him into the apartment.

It’s so casual and unaffected that neither Peter nor Ned register what she’s just said right away.

“What are you guys doing here?” says Peter, blinking and trying to banish the same surreal sense he had when Mr. Stark showed up last night, that he is somehow hallucinating. “Aren’t you supposed to be in—wait, _what_?”

“Cool apartment,” says MJ, who is now circling the living room, examining the books on May’s shelves. “Oh, nice, your aunt reads Sylvia Plath? It’s nice to see angst isn’t just for adolescents anymore.”

Peter rounds on Ned, who is staring at MJ with an open mouth.

“Ned!” Peter hisses.

He yanks Ned inside the apartment and shuts the door behind him.

“I didn’t tell her!” Ned squeaks. “I swear, I didn’t!”

“Well then how—?”

“Coulda been a joke,” says MJ, now walking up to them. She pulls a donut out of the bag, takes a massive bite, and tosses the others to Peter, who catches them entirely on reflex. “Probably isn’t now. Great poker face by the way, Parker.”

“I’m not Spider-Man,” says Peter stupidly.

Around her mouthful of donut, MJ pulls a face.

“Don’t insult my intelligence, Peter,” she says. “Is that your room?”

She is already turning, heading toward the open door, and Peter, who is still trying to figure out what just happened, stuffs the donuts into Ned’s arms and trip-runs around her to slam the door shut before she can enter.

“MJ, what are you doing here?” he says desperately, his voice rather squeaky. “Ned, what—?”

Ned is still standing by the front door, dumbstruck.

“Ned didn’t tell me,” says MJ.

“I told you!” says Ned, emerging from his stupor. “I was just telling her I was gonna bring you your homework, right, and she was like, Cool Ned, I’ll come with and I was like, Are you sure? and she was all, Yeah, why don’t we go now? and I was like, we have class, and she said, Don’t be a coward, so we ditched and—I didn’t tell her!”

Throughout this impressive speech, MJ hasn’t taken her eyes off of Peter who, in spite of himself, can feel his color rising. His mouth is dry when he says,

“How—how did you figure it out?”

MJ rolls her eyes. “Honestly, the fact that our entire class _hasn’t_ figured it out makes me deeply concerned for our generation. If the DC thing wasn’t enough, the whole disappearing off the bus in the middle of an alien invasion thing was a definite clincher. Are you gonna let me see where the magic happens or not?”

“You—you can’t just go in my room!”

“Well if you’re not gonna let me snoop, how am I supposed to figure out what you’ve been hiding all week?”

Peter hasn’t felt this off-kilter since May caught him in the suit, and considering he’s been to several other planets in the intervening time, that is saying something.

But before he can decide how to answer this question under MJ’s unwavering stare, her expression abruptly shifts. It’s so sudden and unfamiliar that Peter doesn’t recognize this new face as one of concern until she grabs his arm.

“Come sit down,” she says.

“MJ, you can’t—”

“Your ear is bleeding. Come sit.”

Peter reaches up to his left ear, where her eyes are fixed, and his fingertips come back red and sticky.

“Oh. Shit.”

He allows her to pull him over to the couch, where she drags him down to sit beside her, tilting his head with surprisingly gentle hands to look into his ear.

“Ned, stop just standing there, get some warm water or something.”

Ned jumps and hurried into the kitchen, dropping the already-copious contents of his arms onto the counter so he can search for a washcloth.

“Have you really known since DC?” Peter says weakly when she releases his face. The concerned expression, surprisingly, does not go away.

“No,” says MJ. “Well, yes. I’ve _known_ since DC. But I suspected since the end of freshman year.”

“I’ve only been doing this since the end of freshman year.”

“Yeah, and you left your red and blue pajamas poking out of your backpack about a week after those Spider-Man videos started showing up on YouTube. You’re a terrible liar, Parker. Should I be calling your aunt right now?”

“No!” Peter says, a little too forcefully; but he was really looking forward to having another couple of hours before his world imploded yet again. “No, it’s fine, it’s not a big deal.”

“Your ear is literally oozing blood, dude,” says Ned, dropping onto the couch beside them, holding the same bowl May used last night, but a different washcloth. “It looks like kind of a big deal. Are you sick? Is this why you passed out in decathlon practice?”

“I’m fine,” says Peter again, though he’s starting to feel less and less so. The first potent kick from Bruce’s blood doper is beginning to wear off, and though it’s nothing like the unbearable sleepiness he was battling against a moment ago, the low-grade fatigue starts to return in full form. “You guys shouldn’t have ditched class for me.”

“We’re your friends,” says MJ. “Of course we should have.”

And—shit. The tears from last night are back, prodding at the backs of his eyes, but it’s one thing to cry when you’re having a heart-to-heart with your mentor, the man who once watched you die. It’s another thing entirely to cry in front of Michelle Jones, who would probably drop kick a baby if she found it annoying. He tries to turn his head away, but Ned is in the other direction, and he hasn’t cried in front of Ned since Uncle Ben died. He was kind of enjoying the fact that Ned thinks he’s tough.

“Peter,” says Ned, and his voice conveys that he has clearly noticed the threat of tears. “What is going _on_ , man?”

Peter opens his mouth, another lie ready on his tongue, another excuse, another dismissal. All of it is ready, waiting to be said with the kind of practiced ease that only comes from lying over and over, every day of your life.

But what comes out instead is the truth.

Maybe he’s just too tired to keep up with the lies. Or maybe, more than he realized, the lies were beginning to poison him—maybe not as deadly as the virus, but just as insidious. As it all pours out—Titan and Thanos, Tony ignoring him, the bruises, Dr. Banner and Dr. Strange, the endless, endless fear and worry—Peter feels like something cold and deadly is leaching out of him, and by the time he stops talking he is practically sagging with relief, so glad to have people who know the whole truth that he barely even realizes what he’s done until it’s over.

“—and now there’s nothing I can do,” he concludes, after a solid twenty minutes of pouring out all these toxic secrets. “I just have to hope that Dr. Strange gets back to us, or that Dr. Banner finds a cure, because if they don’t, I’m dead.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. It’s the first time he’s said those words out loud. “And I can’t do that to—to Aunt May, and Mr. Stark, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I just have to wait.”

Peter has been staring at his hands while he talks, but now he glances up, and sees that MJ and Ned are both staring at him. Ned’s mouth is open; he closes it when Peter looks at him, and gulps so hard he might have swallowed his own tongue.

MJ, on the other hand, is looking at him with that same even, unreadable expression she always wears, the one that makes it impossible to know what she is really thinking.

And Peter realizes. He has just dumped his worst thoughts and fears—all of them—on two teenagers, fears he didn’t even want to express to his own aunt and Mr. Stark for fear of how it would affect them.

“Oh, shit,” he says. “Shit, guys, I’m—I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—to scare you, I shouldn’t have… Ned, I’m gonna be fine—and MJ, this… this must be so weird, you just found out and this is such a heavy—I’m not usually this like, dramatic about it, the whole Spider-Man thing. I mean, most of the time it’s kind of fun, you know, it’s not like—”

MJ’s expression doesn’t change a whit as she lifts a hand and presses it to Peter’s mouth. He stops talking.

“I didn’t just find out, dumbass,” she says. “Now shut up, and tell me how to work your television.”

She holds eye contact with him for a second longer, then lowers her hand.

“Um,” says Peter. “What?”

“You said there’s nothing left to do but wait,” says MJ. “So…” She shrugs. “Obviously we’re gonna wait with you. Cough up the remote, dork, we’re gonna watch Miyazaki.”

Bewildered, Peter looks at Ned. He doesn’t look as calm as MJ; in fact, he still looks pretty terrified. But he swallows, again, and says weakly, “Dude, did she just call _you_ a dork and then suggest an anime marathon?”

And all at once, the veil lifts. A flurry of movement ensues, and Peter is in the middle of it, baffled. MJ tosses a pillow at Ned. Ned catches it, then produces the remote, upon which he had been sitting. Before Peter can figure out what is happening, Ned has queued up five movies and MJ has, somehow, dug a blanket and a stack of pillows out of the closet, which she has formed into a nest all around Peter on the couch. Ned takes it upon himself to retrieve the donuts, as well as every snack in the house, which he deposits on the coffee table.

They settle in on either side of Peter, buffering him, and Ned starts _Princess Mononoke_.

It’s all surreal, but not in the way seeing them at the door was. There’s no wondering if this is real, or how he’s going to hide everything from them, because he can feel Ned on his left and MJ on his right, and he doesn’t have to hide anything, because they know it all. It’s surreal because it’s so good—a strange island of happiness, in an otherwise dark and violent ocean of unpleasant events and possibilities. The weight of what Peter has just told them hangs over them and they know it—how could it not?—but it has receded somewhat, driven back by the warmth and light of Peter’s most enduring friendship and this new, unexpected one with MJ. They poke fun at Ned when he jumps at the appearance of the demon boar, and groan whenever things get bloody, which is most of the time. When they are two movies deep and growing restless, they joke and laugh and play Bullshit with a set of old cards that MJ unearths from the junk drawer (Peter loses, terribly, to many a raised eyebrow from MJ). It’s almost normal. It’s… really good.

Then, when evening is encroaching and they grow tired of the cards, Ned puts on _Howl’s Moving Castle_ and they lean back on the couch, and just when Sophie is comforting Howl about his orange hair, MJ slips her hand into Peter’s under the blanket, and suddenly _really good_ ratchets all the way up to great. It keeps on going straight to excellent when, upon giving her a startled glance ( _Did you really mean to do that?_ ) he sees that she is actually smiling

MJ _. Smiling_.

And suddenly Peter really, really, _really_ hopes he keeps on living. For a crazy long time.

This, of course, is when everything goes to hell.

Peter is just trying on a smile of his own—a goofy grin, actually, because nonchalance was never really his style—when several things happen in quick succession:

First, a sparking, golden circle appears in the air above his head. Ned squawks; MJ glances up; Peter gasps. But before any of them can do more than that, the portal disappears, and a piece of singed paper drifts into Peter’s lap. Much to his chagrin, MJ releases his hand so he can grab it.

But before Peter can read Dr. Strange’s note, a great caterwauling cuts through the air, over the sound of the movie, and all three of them look at one another, the humor gone from their faces. They all know that siren. It’s the emergency alert system, put in place after the Chitauri attack nearly ten years ago. They only set it off when something big is happening.

Something really big. And something really big is always bad.

As if to confirm this, the phone in Peter’s pocket buzzes, once.

MJ and Ned are already up, moving to barricade the windows the way they’ve been taught, searching for the emergency kit May keeps under the sink.

He pulls the phone out. It’s a text from Bruce, the all-caps almost more frightening than the siren.

_STAY WHERE YOU ARE. WE ARE HANDLING THIS._

Peter just has time to register what the text means—they must be calling in the Hulk, if Banner doesn’t think he’ll be around to stop Peter from joining the fray himself—before the text is replaced by Tony’s face and name. An incoming call.

Peter answers.

“Hey kid,” says Tony, before Peter has even said hello, “I hate that we can’t drag last night’s bonding sesh into a few more days of companionable silence, but we’ve got a bit of a situation down here. God help me for what your aunt will do to me for asking, but we need all hands on deck. You up for a few rounds of weirdness?”

Peter looks at MJ and Ned, who have paused in their preparations to look at him, both of their faces drawn with worry. He thinks of Aunt May, who is probably too caught up in barricading the hospital to call, but who is no doubt hoping that Peter is not going to get caught up in whatever this is.

He thinks of the auto-injectors on his desk.

“I’m in,” he says. “Just tell me where to be.”

“Coordinates are in your suit. See you soon, kid. Be careful.”

And Tony hangs up.

Peter can feel MJ and Ned’s eyes on him as he shoves off the couch, blinks away a surge of dizziness, and heads for his room.

“Peter, you can’t—!” Ned starts.

But Peter is already past him, yanking off his sweatshirt and grabbing the suit from the foot of his bed. It is still crusty with blood around the neck, but he pulls it on anyway, tightens it, and grabs his mask from the desk, along with three of the auto-injectors.

“What is it?”

Peter, who is practically out the window already, turns to see MJ standing in the doorway, Ned behind her, looking over her shoulder.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But you guys need to stay put. Just—just be safe, and don’t open the door for anyone except May. If she asks where I went…” He swallows. “Tell her I’m fine, okay?”

“But you’re not fine,” says Ned. “Peter, what about your blood?”

Peter steels himself, working his expression into one that, he hopes, comes off as serious and authoritative.

“With any luck, it all stays in my body,” he says. He holds up the injectors. “I’ll be okay. I’ll see you guys soon.”

He’s been looking at Ned while he speaks, and when he turns his attention to MJ it becomes distinctly more difficult to maintain his straight face. But she isn’t fretting, like Ned, or panicking, like Peter feels like he is about to. Her face is back to hard, and she nods at him, once.

“You better come back in one piece, idiot,” she says.

And, to his enormous surprise, she strides forward and kisses him on the cheek. He goes the same color as his mask—which he pulls on just before leaping out the window.

In the other room, forgotten, Dr. Strange’s note sits, unread and half-hidden by Peter’s discarded blanket:

_Messages out, but Guardians still in the wind. Stay safe, Peter. There is still hope._

_-Dr. Strange_


	5. The River

Peter can hear the commotion of whatever is up ahead at least twenty blocks out, but it’s not until he is almost upon the chaos that he halts in his web slinging, hauls himself onto a fire escape, and unsticks the auto-injectors from where they are webbed to his outer thigh.

“How’s it looking, Karen?” he asks, as he fumbles with the caps.

Down below, people are flooding in the direction opposite of the one in which Peter is headed. Peter can see a faint, electric-looking glow emanating from behind the buildings on the horizon, hear the roar and crackle of something that doesn’t sound even remotely human. It’s terrifying and thrilling all at once, and he can feel the anticipation of a battle edging out his doubts as he fumbles with the applicators.

“Available Avengers are on-scene and awaiting your arrival, Peter,” says Karen. “Preliminary reports suggested the beast was extraterrestrial, but secondary assessments conclude that it is the result of a genetic experiment gone awry.”

“Excellent,” says Peter. “Genetic experiment gone awry sounds like just the job for a genetic experiment gone awry. And, uh, how am I looking?”

“Your blood pressure is eighty over sixty, well below normal levels, and your heart rate is one-hundred and thirty beats per minute,” Karen chirps. “Shall I send a medical report to the other Avengers, to let them know you’re unfit for battle?”

“No, Karen, and we have got to talk about reigning in your self-initiative with these things. Let’s just see how I look in a second, okay?”

“Roger that, Peter.”

Still gazing at the weird glow in the distance, Peter uncaps the first of the injectors, takes a deep breath, and plunges it into his thigh.

It’s just like that morning; the swoop, the rush of clarity, the sudden energy. Peter sucks in a gasp from the potency of it, forcing himself to hold the needle in as his pain receptors ratchet up a notch from his sharpened awareness. He almost feels normal when he withdraws it—but almost isn’t good enough when you’re about to go toe-to-toe with something big enough to call in every available Avenger, so as soon as he tosses the first needle away, he plunges the second right in in its place.

And _there_ it is. Peter had almost forgotten how good he normally feels—how aware, how strong. The dull shroud that has been hanging over him and his powers lifts with the second injection, and Peter actually gasps with the absolute giddiness it produces: it’s almost as powerful as the very first time he climbed a wall, or used his web slingers.

“ _Wow_ ,” he says. “Wow. Okay—Karen, how are my vitals now?”

There is a slight pause.

“Vitals are within normal ranges,” says Karen.

Is Peter imagining it, or does Karen not sound as chipper as she normally does? But there’s no time to think on it. He tucks the third injector into his boot and gets to his feet, taking what feels like his first full inhale in weeks.

“Then let’s do this,” he says, and he leaps off the fire escape and into the fading sunlight.

* * *

When Peter does make it to the west bank of the East River, a few leagues down from the Brooklyn Bridge at the location Tony has marked as the disaster’s epicenter on his suit’s GPS, Peter isn’t immediately sure what he’s looking at. He recognizes most of the players: everyone who is stationed at the Avenger’s facility is present, along with anyone who is lives on or near the East Coast—Wanda is there, along with Hawkeye and Black Widow, and Tony and Sam are circling overhead. At the moment, however, the only one who seems to be engaging with the… _thing_ that is half-in and half-out of the murky water at the river’s edge is Hulk, whose distant roars Peter can hear as he swings over to where the others are holding the perimeter. Wanda is currently levitating massive chunks of riverbed to build a makeshift barricade between the creature and the nearest buildings, and Tony and Sam are airborne, so Peter heads for Hawkeye first, who is in the process of completing the evacuation of the immediate area.

“Explain something to me, Spider-Dude,” Hawkeye says by way of greeting, shooting an arrow at impending tentacle so that it withdraws just before it has the chance to flatten the terrified office workers he is assisting, “presuming that we all have free will, why would anyone in their right mind _choose_ to live in New York City?”

“The pizza, I think,” says Peter, webbing a second tentacle to the nearest wall. “Possibly the hot dogs. I’m surprised no one’s done an official survey, but that’s the fast food lobby for you. So, uh, what the hell is this thing?”

The river monster is, as far as Peter can tell, a cross between an ape and something more amphibious. It has arms—possibly legs, though its lower half is still submerged—but also the aforementioned tentacles, which are scaly and green and cover its entire body like weird, sentient hair. These tentacles obscure everything but the thing’s bright black eyes and a mouth that is full of rows and rows of teeth, and as a bonus, they are lashing out at everything within reach. It actually sort of reminds him of the demon-possessed boar in _Princess Mononoke_ , except it is the size of the nearby buildings and pulsing, changing from dark green to bright and back again, shimmering like an octopus trying on different types of camouflage.

It would be kind of cool, actually, if it were not clearly intent on leaving the river and smashing the city.

“That,” says Tony’s voice, making Peter jump; he didn’t realize he’d been patched in to the comm line, “is further evidence that I should have retired when I had the chance. Good to see you, kid. Welcome to the four hundredth rendition of ‘Why Genetic Experimentation is Bad: A Tony Stark Production.’ What are the odds the world gets the message on this go?”

“Hey, Mr. Stark,” says Peter. Even in the face of this monster, his grin comes easy. Without prolonged silence hanging unacknowledged between them, and his usual strength pumping through his veins, Peter feels invigorated, excited. “I’d say odds are low. And can I just point out how offensive that is to all spider-kind?”

“You may not,” says Tony. “And one dweeby kid does not a ‘kind’ make.”

“Where do you need me?”

“No game plan yet,” says Tony. “All we’ve figured out so far is that A: the thing is in the river and B: it wants out. So do what you can to stop it from accomplishing B until we figure out why A is even a thing. Don’t get too close though—containment only for you, got it?”

“Got it,” says Peter, and he flings a web at one of the buildings nearest to the creature, using it to launch himself to a higher vantage point.

From his new perch atop the office building, Peter has a better idea of what the others are trying to accomplish. Aside from Wanda’s attempts to barricade the creature, Black Widow is on the fire escape of a building adjacent to Peter’s, watching something on a handheld screen—presumably footage from what Peter now sees are several drones circling the monster’s head. Now that the immediate area is evacuated, Hawkeye is climbing to join her, while Iron Man and Falcon circle it from overhead like buzzing flies: this, more than the barricade, seems to be what’s keeping it in the river; it’s distracted, using its tentacles to swat at them while they fly just out of reach.

But nobody seems to want to engage with the thing and risk drawing it out of the water—nobody, that is, except the Hulk. Even though the thing is at least three times his size, Hulk crashes through the water as Peter watches, as though the current is nothing more than a light breeze, and takes a running leap at its right forelimb. The creature swats him away—he goes flying, crashing into the east bank, and then propels himself up with a roar. Peter, who has fought alongside the Hulk often enough now to know the difference between roars, can tell the Hulk is enjoying himself.

“Uh,” says Peter, as the Hulk makes another valiant attempt at the beast and is once again flung away like he is the weight and consistency of a packing peanut, “I hate to be the guy who critiques another guy’s monster, but did this really warrant the big alarm? As insane as I realize this sounds, isn’t this kind of… tame compared to an alien attack?”

But before any of them can answer, the monster does it for them.

There is just enough time for Peter to brace himself: as the Hulk is readying for another attack, a low whine emanates from under the water; the others, who seem to have experienced this already, drop into defensive positions, and Iron Man and Falcon veer out of the thing’s immediate headspace right as Peter’s Spidey-Sense goes wild. He drops from where he’s crouched on the ledge to the actual rooftop, clinging to the brick with his fingertips as the creature unleashes a crackling pulse of energy.

The pulse makes a sound like thunder as it sweeps over him, nearly bowling Peter over in spite of his grip on the brick. He feels the building shake, and before his eyes a crack appears in the cement floor of the roof; Peter looks over his shoulder just in time to see the pulse radiate out over the surrounding buildings, shaking them like a small earthquake.

“That’s why,” says Wanda grimly over the comm.

“Oh shit,” says Peter, getting to his feet.

“Oh shit is right,” says Sam. He and Tony are closing back in, because in the moment since they scattered to avoid the pulse, the creature started dragging itself toward the bank. “You okay there, Spidey?”

“I’m good,” he says, “I’m honestly more shocked that all the kids in elementary school were right. Sorry I jinxed it, guys.”

“A few more of those and these buildings become pancakes,” says Tony, and sure enough when Peter looks down at the crack in the rooftop, Karen automatically pulls up a diagram of the building, along with the ominous heading _Structural Integrity: 79%_. “Anyone spotting a weak point should speak up now.”

The problem, Peter realizes, is that when he turns the same system in his suit that analyzed the building on the creature, the screen shivers and fizzles, and Karen fails to produce a readout. Whatever is creating that pulse is also blocking their tech. Which means—

“You guys keep it distracted,” says Peter, “I’m going to get a closer look.”

There is a chorus of objections, to which Peter does not listen. The Hulk is launching another assault, and that leaves him with a very brief window with which to get near enough without catching its attention. He slings another web, this time at the bridge, and leaps off the building.

Tony and Sam catch on quick, and come to the Hulk’s aid in distracting it; Tony fires a repulsor and Sam an explosive dart, both of them aiming for the thing’s glimmering black eyes. It roars, furious, but the distraction works—possibly better than any of them anticipated. As Peter swings, the thing finally gets to its feet.

There is a moment where everything seems to slow down. Peter gets these more and more often, lately: it’s part of his enhancement, but it’s still slightly disconcerting, like time itself has slowed instead of his perception of it.

As Peter swings past the monster, he sees several things at once:

First, standing, the thing is almost as tall as the building Peter just vacated, and, more disconcertingly, its shape underneath all the tentacles and shimmering color looks much more human when it is upright.

Second, Peter realizes that the pulses give off a visual warning: that greenish shimmer starts to turn black, and this blackness ripples through the tentacles in a wave as it readies itself for another blast.

Third, there is something strapped to the thing’s leg, which seems to be the point from which this blackness emanates.

Then the pulse goes off.

Time resumes its regular pace. This is not a comfort, because apparently the thing was holding back before: this wave of energy is stronger than the last, and it snaps Peter’s web midway through the arc of his swing. Peter has no time to reorient himself, to see what direction the new force is taking him—just spinning buildings and water and monster and—

He is caught by the Hulk.

It takes Peter just a second to recognize that he is clutched in an enormous but surprisingly gentle fist, and then the Hulk lands on the west bank, jolting them both. Peter expects the Hulk to drop him—normally when he pulls Peter out of dire falls, he’s eager to get back to the fight—but instead, he holds Peter up to his face.

“Big Guy!”

That’s Black Widow, her voice startled; she thinks Hulk is about to hurt Peter, and the others are too distracted by containing the creature to intervene. But of course the Hulk doesn’t have a comm; he can’t hear her, though Peter can.

“It’s okay!” he says. “It’s fine, it’s—”

Hulk snorts, and the hot blast of his breath shuts Peter up.

For just a second Peter thinks he might be wrong—that the Hulk _is_ going to hurt him. He’s certainly glaring, and even though Peter _does_ like the guy, there’s no denying that he’s scary. Each of his fingers is the thickness of Peter’s waist, and since those fingers are currently wrapped around said waist, that scariness factor is increased by a factor of about ten.

But then Peter meets the Hulk’s eye, and there is something distinctly… Bruce-like in his expression.

Peter has never really been sure about how the connection between Dr. Banner and his creation works, but he’s always been under the impression that the two of them have a mutual don’t-ask-don’t-tell sort of policy when it comes to their separate activities. The Hulk doesn’t care for Bruce, and Bruce doesn’t care for the Hulk, but so long as they can remain only laterally aware of one another when inhabiting their respective consciousnesses, they can function fairly well as a pseudo-unit.

So why does it look like Hulk knows exactly why Peter _should not_ be here right now?

The Hulk straightens, lifts his free hand, and jabs a massive finger into Peter’s chest.

“Bad Spider,” he says. “ _Stay here_.”

And, with one final glare, he deposits Peter on the bank and springs back into action.

There is a second when Peter stumbles, blinking and trying to figure out what just happened. The edge from his genetically-tailored blood-doping high is fading; a faint fuzziness has appeared at the edges of his vision.

“I’m gonna second the Big Guy on that,” says Tony on the comm, jerking Peter out of his daze. “What part of _containment only_ didn’t you understand, Parker?”

Peter shakes his head, recovering.

“Guys,” he says, breaking into a run to get back to the creature’s immediate area, “there’s some sort of device on its leg, it looks electronic, and it’s definitely causing those pulse things.”

There’s a short pause.

“If you’re expecting a reward for that stunt, you’re sadly mistaken, kid. I don’t care what Easter eggs you unlocked.”

Peter grins as he skids to a halt under the fire escape which Black Widow and Hawkeye are perched upon. Wanda is just a few yards away from him now, and he sees her eyes flick toward him, full of concern. She probably sees how he’s panting. He throws a thumbs up, trying to assuage whatever fear has risen in her mind.

He’s winded—more than he should be after such a short sprint—but he’s exhilarated to have spotted something the others didn’t—it feels like proof that he should be here. Problem, meet solution.

“I think I can get to it.”

The creature in the river is still standing, and Peter has to crane his neck back to see all of it, but he can still see the thing around its upper leg, shiny and metallic and crackling with faint electricity.    

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” says Clint. “Stay where you are, kid, one of us will—”

“Use your superpowers to jump on that thing’s leg?” Peter interrupts. “Wanda’s holding it back, and it’s got eyes on Iron Man and Falcon. It doesn’t even know I’m here. If I can be quick—”

“Peter,” says Wanda, and Peter can tell from her tone that his thumbs up was not the magic charm he was hoping for. He’s still panting. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” says Peter.

But he’s not so sure anymore. That fuzziness is morphing, turning into a throbbing aura, accompanied by a faint lightheadedness that is probably not at all appropriate for the situation. Now that the wave of adrenaline from the injections is clearly wearing off, Peter’s determination to get to the device redoubles, except now with the added challenge of doing it quickly enough that he can get out of here before anyone sees him stumble—or worse, get another fountain of a bloody nose in front of everyone.

“Stay right where you are, kid,” says Tony, “that thing is about a hundred times your size and we don’t know what happens if you touch it directly. On the ground, Pete, that’s an order.”

There’s no humor in his voice now, and Peter wonders if Tony is regretting calling Peter in. He hates the doubt in Tony’s voice, almost as much as he hates the idea of the monster getting into the city because he was nervous or they were indecisive.

Luckily, there’s nothing Tony can do to stop him. Or—maybe unluckily, because Peter is pretty sure their brief period of peace will come to an end as soon as he does what he’s planning to do. But that doesn’t change the fact that Iron Man’s repulsors and Sam’s explosive darts are the only things keeping the monster in the river. Now that it’s standing it could probably step over Wanda’s barricade as easy as skipping rope. Wanda has realized this too; she tears her eyes away from Peter and begins launching chunks of dirt and rock at the creature as makeshift projectiles. Even Hulk is turned away; he’s finally managed to get a grip on the monster’s ankle, but he’s climbing the wrong leg; the device is on the other one.

While all eyes are momentarily averted, Peter crouches down, pulls the last of the injectors out of his boot, and jams it into his thigh.

This time the rush of clarity isn’t quite as intense as it has been. It actually makes him a little nauseous, but the blurriness immediately recedes from the edges of his vision and his next breath is easy and cool and clear, so Peter drops the injector and flings a web up to the portion of the bridge that is nearest the monster’s head.

He hears some vague and distant shouting over the comm as he swings up, but Peter is all focus, now, his not-inconsiderable sights focused on the device. As he gets closer he can see it’s held to the thing’s upper thigh with a sturdy leather strap—but not sturdy enough that it’s a match for super-strength. Unfortunately, even super-strength needs leverage, and leverage requires something to apply tha force against.

So Peter settles on the only thing available: the creature’s leg.

He slings a web. It lands somewhere in the vicinity of the creature’s hip, where it is immediately swarmed by the weird tentacles, but by the time they manage to detach it, Peter is already clinging to a spot right above the thing’s knee.

The tentacles turn their efforts toward him.

It takes Peter just a second to realize he isn’t going to be able to fight them off and maintain his grip on the thing’s skin, which is cold and slimy and generally disgusting. So the first tentacle that descends, rather than try to push it away, he grabs onto it and rides it higher as it tries to throw him off, then grabs another, and another, making his way toward the device.

“Worst—carnival ride—ever,” he grunts. “Please stop shouting,” he adds, because every single person is screaming at him to abandon ship. “This is already very— _augh_!”

It seems the monster has noticed Peter at last—or at least, decided he isn’t some harmless insect. Rather than let its possibly-sentient tentacles do the work, it turns its attention away from Iron Man and Falcon and begins to reach for Peter instead.

The black glow begins to ripple though it’s iridescent flesh, emanating from the device. It’s gearing up for another blast.

But it’s too late; Peter takes a flying leap and grabs onto the metal box with both hands, and heaves himself backward with all his weight.

Or—not precisely too late. Right as the box breaks free, a final pulse goes off, flinging Peter away from the monster, the device still clutched in his hands. From such a close range the effect is concussive. Peter’s ears ring and his vision blurs as he falls, but he is vaguely aware that the creature is shrinking, the tentacles receding, flesh turning from green to pink—

And then he hits the water.

There is cold and pressure and a rushing sensation all around him, but just for moment. Then, for the second time in as many days, metallic hands hook him under the arms and lift him up.

Peter gasps as his head breaks the water, but as he’s wearing his mask this only earns him a mouthful of murky river water. It isn’t until Tony deposits him on the bank and Peter rips the mask off that he’s able to draw in a full breath, which he immediately uses to let out a whoop of victory. The device is still clutched in his right hand. Peter thrusts it into the air.

“Yes!” he shouts. “Peter Parker two, unnaturally-gigantic-science-experiment dudes _zero!_ ”

Behind Tony, Peter can see the Hulk removing what was, just moments ago; a giant river monster from said river. The thing has shrank back into a man, who coughs and splutters and shouts as the Hulk drags him onto the bank, then immediately shuts up as the remaining four Avengers all point their respective weapons—and glowing, telekinetic hands—at his head.

“It was a _dude_ ,” says Peter, thrilled and awed. “That is so cool, and _so_ disgusting! I was on his knee, I was—“

And then, finally, he looks at Iron Man and sees that the faceplate is retracted. Peter catches sight of Mr. Stark’s face. Peter shuts up.

Mr. Stark is pale. His lips are pressed together tightly and his eyes are searching Peter’s face like he is trying to find the weakest possible spot at which to direct whatever verbal blow he is about to dole out. All of the elation drains out of Peter in a rush as he remembers that, not only has he just directly disobeyed Mr. Stark _again_ , he has also done so brazenly, not a full day after Tony gave him a full speech about how he is the future of the Avengers. If Peter had a guess, he’d say Tony is regretting expressing that sentiment now: the anger in his expression is sharp. Peter drops his arms, then his eyes.

“Mr. Stark, I’m—”

“If you’re trying to kill me, kid,” Tony interrupts, “there are more guaranteed methods than a heart attack. I’ve heard cyanide is relatively quick and painless.”

Peter glances up through his wet hair and—to his shock, Tony gives him a shaky smile.

Peter’s own look of contrition turns instantly into a grin.

“I don’t have access to your food, Mr. Stark,” he says. “And besides, what guy in his right mind is going to go for something as boring as poison when he can just knock out a fifty-foot sea giant instead?”

“Don’t go for showmanship over sensibility, Parker. Leave the flashiness to the professionals.”

“Okay, but you have to admit that was totally—”

But Tony then cuts Peter off by doing something he has never done before: he steps out of the suit and pulls Peter into a hug.

It’s brief and it’s shocking, so by the time Tony pulls away Peter has not even had time to lift his own arms. Tony holds him at arm’s length for a second, pats him on the shoulder, and says a little gruffly, “Come on, you punk. Let’s get you into some clothes that don’t smell like a New York sewage dump. Even your usual teenage musk is preferable.”

Peter gives up on trying to figure out what just happened. He nods.

Tony frowns.

“Hey, kid,” he says, “you okay? You have a little—“

He points to his nose. Peter lifts his hand to his own, and even though the fabric of his suit is wet, he can tell his fingertips come away bloody.

Something turns over in his chest. Reality rushing in.

“It’s fine,” he says, “just another—”

But he never finishes the sentence. Because all of a sudden something besides words comes rushing up in his throat, something bitter and metallic. And at the same time, Peter feels something happen deep within his chest and abdomen, some small breaking that feels both physical and not, as if something inside of him has snapped, unleashing a torrent like a small river inside his body.

The strength drains out of him, like the rush from the injection in reverse. It’s swift and potent and his legs buckle before he or Tony have web registered that anything is wrong. Peter drops to his knees. He catches himself by flinging out his free hand before his face hits gravel, but it doesn’t do much to stave off the horror of what is roiling beneath his skin, inside his body. In his guts.

Peter takes one short, sharp gasp of air, and then vomits a fountain of blood at Tony Stark’s feet.


	6. The Blood

It takes Tony too long to realize this isn’t a dream. 

It doesn’t help that everything preceding has a suspicious wash of unreality about it. It’s not so much the monster in the river—though it is one of the weirder ones even he’s come across—as it is the days leading up to the monster. Fighting with the kid, apologizing to the kid—Tony knew it had to happen, but he’s put it off for so long that even in finally doing so, he has had the weird, gray sensation of being not-quite awake after a vivid dream, while he tries to figure out which parts were real and which weren’t.

(The Guardians—real. Time travel—real. Thanos—unfortunately real. The kid, dying, like he does in Tony’s nightmares, over and over—not real. At least, not permanently.)    

Even with the apology out there, though, Tony has known there’s more work to do. The kid looked like he was carrying the world on his shoulders when Tony left his apartment the night before—and then, of course, there was whatever that nonsense with Bruce was. There was more to be said, more role-modeling (God, how did he get  _ that _ title?) to be done, but none of that is exactly Tony’s purview, so even with questions about the kid’s wellbeing and the secrets he might be keeping hovering about him like so many irksome flies, he’s not sure how to approach them until the call comes in about the creature in the East River. 

Fighting Tony can do. Fighting for this ridiculous world might be just about the  _ only  _ way he knows how to communicate how much he cares about the damn place—and so, he thinks, what better way to approach the kid than in the arena he knows best? It’s a language they both speak, besides: Peter and Tony are both fluent in world-saving. 

He’s a little hesitant: of course he is, especially remembering the ice in May’s glare when he arrived at the apartment. Peter  _ is _ only sixteen, an age at which Tony was about as far from fighting fifty foot monsters as it was possible to be (drunkenly crashing his dad’s vintage Ferari was more his speed, at the time). But, he reminds himself, Peter is not him, and thank God for that. The kid has more than proven himself.

And, as it turns out, they really  _ do  _ need him. Peter is the one who figures out how to take the monster down. He’s also the one who takes it upon himself to make sure this happens.

Still, when he watches Peter tumble into the river, riding the wave of his disobedience and one final, massive pulse from the creature, Tony isn’t sure if he wants to hug him or murder him. He isn’t sure until he pulls the Peter out of the water, opens the faceplate of his suit, and sees the glowing, ecstatic triumph on Peter’s face. Like everything he’s ever wanted from life has just happened in the space of a moment. 

So Tony goes with instinct number one. 

For a minute the shock on Peter’s face is so raw it makes Tony ache just a little, thinking that he’s been holding this back too long, that he’s missed the moment when the kid needs or even wants this kind of affirmation. But then Peter smiles, nervously, and the light is back in his face by the time Tony starts to lead him away from where the others are still wrangling whatever or whoever they just pulled out of the river. He’s going to have to deal with it eventually, he knows, but for now he can let the others take care of it. Every once in a while, dry clothes and a New York slice have to trump swift justice, or else what are they even fighting for?

Then Peter’s nose starts to bleed.

“Hey, kid, you okay?” says Tony, thinking of the blood he missed on the rooftop yesterday. “You’ve got a little—”

Peter’s hand flies to his nose, and something shifts in his expression as he looks at the blood on his fingers, like all the giddy youth Tony was so grateful for just a second ago has just suddenly sloughed away.

“It’s fine,” says Peter, “just another—”

And then all at once the color vacates Peter’s face. Tony has never seen anyone go white like that, like all the blood has just been instantly removed from their body—and it’s so unsettling that this is the moment he starts to wonder whether he might be dreaming.

Which is why, when the kid pitches onto his knees, Tony watches him go down like he’s not even there. Like he’s a thousand miles away and watching this behind the comfort of some screen, of the knowledge that none of this is real. It can’t possibly be real, because nightmares aren’t supposed to come true. 

Except he’s Tony Stark, and when you’re Tony Stark, that’s exactly what nightmares tend to do. 

Still, there’s a moment—it can’t last more than a second, but to Tony it feels like an age—just after Peter’s knees hit the ground, during which Tony holds on to that sense of unreality, holds onto it like he’s dangling over an endless chasm and the notion of the  _ not real _ is the only thing keeping him from a terminal fall.

And then a gush of blood pours out of the kid’s mouth, and reality comes rushing up to meet him.

“Oh,” says Peter, looking down at the river of red as it washes over the gravel, running down towards Tony’s feet, toward the larger river behind him. “Oh no.”

Peter spasms. Another wave of blood rolls out of him, but where the first was watery, cut with stomach acid, this one is dark and viscous and sticky. Blood is coming out of his nose, too, a steady stream of it. Like a faucet.

And that’s when, finally, Tony drops to his knees beside him. 

( _ Not real, not real, not real _ , his mind chants. But it is).

“Help,” he says. His voice is so faint even he can barely hear it.

( _ Pull it the fuck together, this is real! _ )

“Help!” This time it comes out as a shout, and he hears the crunch of gravel as someone starts running towards him. “Jesus  _ fuck _ , somebody get over here now!”

Tony sticks his arms out and manages to catch Peter just as the kid’s arms give out and he pitches sideways. Tony wraps around Peter’s chest, turning him over and pulling him into his lap. Blood is still gushing out of his nose, out of the corners of his mouth, covering the porcelain-white skin of his face as Sam and Clint skid to a halt in front of them. 

“Oh my God,” says Sam. 

“Don’t just stand there!” Tony chokes, because both of them seem momentarily paralyzed, and he’s wasted enough time on that himself. “Get help, get—”

“There’s a medical team ten blocks out,” says Sam, “they’re standing by, but we had them holding a wide perimeter because of those pulses, I’ll—”

And he opens his wingsuit and takes off without finishing his sentence. 

Clint drops down next to them, pale but already working the shock out of his expression in a way Tony could never manage, hands moving to help Tony prop Peter up as another gush of blood rises out of his mouth.

“Jesus Christ, what did that thing do to him?” Clint says.

Right. The monster. The pulse. The device is lying discarded a few feet from where Peter is sitting, limp and gasping wetly, supported by Tony and Clint’s hands, and the fucker who made it is just a few yards away, restrained by the Hulk—while the Hulk is held back by Natasha who, by the looks of things, is trying to keep his attention off of the scene unfolding on the bank behind him, and Wanda, who remains in case Natasha fails.

Tony reaches for the little box, but as he does, Peter shakes his head.

“No,” he gasps. “No. Me—it’s… me. My fault, I—”

Peter stops abruptly, choking. Clint thumps him on the chest until the blood in his throat comes loose; Peter coughs it out and sucks in a tight, frantic gasp of air. 

“What are you talking about, kid?”

Tony’s hands desperately want to move, to help, but there is nothing to apply pressure to, no way to stop the blood from pouring out of Peter’s body because it is coming from  _ inside _ . So he just keeps holding onto him, as Peter’s shakes turn into massive, uncontrollable shudders, and blood starts to leak out of his ears as well.

Peter’s eyes roll wildly for a second before coming to rest on Tony’s face, and he swallows convulsively a few times before attempting to answer. 

“It’s—it’s—I shoulda told you I—oh God,  _ May _ . I shoulda—I shoulda—”

“You’re gonna be fine,” Clint says sharply. “We have people coming. Just tell us what’s going on.”

“I ca—I can’t, I—” Peter looks toward the shore, where Natasha is still talking to the Hulk. “Br—Bru…”

He cuts himself off with another wet, hacking cough.

Tony and Clint look at each other. Tony’s face feels numb.

“He’s saying ‘Bruce,’” he says, and the horror in his voice is reflected in Clint’s expression.

“He’s still Hulked out,” Clint whispers. “If Hulk sees this he’s gonna stay that way.”

“Go. Tell Nat—tell her she’s gotta get Bruce back, fast. Faster than fast. And for fuck’s sake, don’t let him come over here until he’s Banner again.”

Clint nods, pushes to his feet, and sprints off. 

Tony looks back down at Peter and he can’t understand how there can possibly be so much blood. It’s still pouring out of his nose and ears, onto Tony’s lap. Tony can feel it pooling and sticking on his legs, warm. 

Their eyes meet. Peter struggles to draw in a breath.

“I’m s—I’m so sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m—”

“Shut up,” says Tony.

It comes out so much harsher than he intends it, but the panic those words produce is more than Tony can contend with. The last time he heard them coming out of Peter’s mouth, he thought they were going to be the last words the kid ever spoke.

Peter closes his mouth, swallowing convulsively. A tear rises in the corner of his eye and rolls down his cheek, cutting a path through the blood. 

Every breath Peter draws in sounds like crumpled plastic, and to his horror Tony realizes he  _ knows _ that sound: he’s heard it in his own chest. It’s been ten years, but time has not tempered the memory of being pulled out of the water tank and dragged back to the locked room where Yinsen waited, to hold him upright and massage his chest while Tony coughed out torrents of murky water and fought against the tightness in his throat, more terrifying than fists and weapons because it was happening within his own body, because there was nothing to do to combat it except let his lungs do battle, and hope they were strong enough. 

Peter is drowning. He’s drowning in his own blood, and there’s nothing Tony can do.

“You’re gonna be fine,” he says. But the words taste false in his mouth.

“Sorry,” Peter whispers. Like he can’t help himself. Of course he can’t, because he’s sixteen years old and he can’t breathe around the blood in his lungs and his throat and his mouth, and even then he’s still trying to figure out some way to comfort the grown man cradling his head in his lap and panicking.

Tony puts a hand on Peter’s face as the kid tries for another hiccuping, stuttering breath. He looks to the sky.

“Where the fuck is that medical team?” he says, to no one in particular.

He can hear the  _ thwack  _ of helicopter blades in the distance, but they are still a couple minutes out, and he’s just thinking he should put on the suit and try to fly Peter back to headquarters himself—but what will an unguarded flight do to him in this condition?—when Wanda steps into his line of sight.

She presses her hands to her mouth—but just for a second, because Tony gives her a swift, furious look, and she forces herself to drop them as she crouches down beside them.

“Oh,  _ Pietro _ ,” she says.

Tony doesn’t miss the use of the Romanian version of Peter’s name, but he doesn’t know if Peter catches it. He doesn’t know if Peter has ever even heard about Wanda’s dead brother, or if Wanda realizes what she’s just said.

“H-hi,” Peter says. 

“Shh,” Wanda soothes. “Shh, it’s alright. ”

Her hand glows red as she raises it and waves it over Peter’s chest, her expression, already stormy, somehow darkening as she does. 

“Can you help him?” Tony murmurs, not wanting Peter to hear if the answer is no. 

Wanda’s brow is deeply furrowed, her own voice barely a whisper when she replies. 

“I thought I felt something earlier,” she says. “Like… like he was being attacked. I thought it was that thing in the river, but it wasn’t around anyone else. It’s still there now.”

“But can you  _ help _ ?”

She lets out a slow breath. “I can slow it down. I think if I try to get rid of it I will make things worse. It’s attached to him somehow. It’s… dark, whatever it is.”

“So slow it down. Christ, do  _ something _ , we can’t just wait for Banner.”

Behind him, he can hear the Hulk grunting something, but he doesn’t turn around, because his body is the only thing blocking him from seeing what’s happening with Peter, and he won’t risk looking over his shoulder, in case the Hulk might recognize the expression on his face, which can only be one of terror.

Wanda nods tightly and lifts both hands over Peter’s chest. There’s a pause, then Peter’s eyes go wide. He sucks in three breaths in a row, each of them sharp as a razor, and his eyes slide shut.

Panic flares—Tony leans forward, horrified—but Wanda holds a hand up. It’s no longer glowing. 

“It was me,” she says, and her voice sounds strangled, like she’s about to cry. She’s lost whatever calm she was forcing upon herself while Peter was conscious. “He shouldn’t be awake for this.”

Sure enough, when Tony looks back down Peter’s breathing has evened out slightly, though it still sounds wet and heavy, his body struggling for each inhale. 

Wanda opens her mouth to say something else, but whatever it is, it’s swept away in a gust of wind and the chop of rotor blades. The helicopter lands, Sam beside it, and a team of paramedics and doctors come bursting out, carrying a stretcher between them. 

Tony is about to stand, to help them lift him onto the stretcher, when a roar rises above the sound of the chopper blades.

Tony leans forward on instinct, folding his body protectively over Peter’s, because judging from the sound of that roar, the helicopter has tipped the Hulk off to what is happening on the shore. Wanda leaps to her feet, but the Hulk doesn’t come near them. Now Tony chances to look, turning his head just in time to see the Hulk, gripping his head, his eyes wide, leap into the East River and disappear.

The paramedics are here now. So is Helen Cho, dressed in scrubs, and she helps them lift Peter off Tony’s lap without a word to him. Tony gets to his feet, staggering on legs that have gone numb from Peter’s weight, looking between the Clint and Natasha, who are tearing off along the bank of the river after the Hulk, to the kid’s form, slack and unmoving as they lift it onto the stretcher and start wheeling him toward the helicopter.

He turns to Wanda.

“I’m going with him,” he says, tapping a command into his StarkWatch. “Take my suit. Get Bruce back, put him in it, and tell him to go supersonic the fucking  _ second _ you do, got it?”

Wanda has never used the suits. She looks a little pale at the notion—or maybe that is just because of what has just unfolded on the bank—but she nods once, her jaw set, and jogs along the bank to where Tony left the suit. 

He turns away and follows the stretcher onto the helicopter and into the air.

* * *

 

By the time they get back to the Avengers’ Facility upstate, Tony is sure Peter is going to die. In fact, he’s sure the only reason he didn’t on the flight up is because of whatever Wanda did on the bank, which kept his breathing steady, his oxygen levels just a hair above deadly for the duration of the trip. 

This certainty comes from what happened when, at Helen’s request, Tony hit the release on Peter’s suit so she and her team could access his skin for the many stickers and needles and tubes they needed to apply. As the shrink-fit fabric retracted, there was a collective gasp: Peter’s skin is bruised like he has been beaten within an inch of his life, nearly every inch of him purple and blue from his thighs to his shoulders. Except from the lack of swelling, it’s clear that this bruising has no external cause. He’s just bleeding internally—bleeding  _ out _ . There’s no source, no wound, no way to stop it. Even Helen, who has treated the Avengers after some of their worst battles, goes pale when she sees it.

She says nothing, just swallows and starts an IV. 

As far as Tony is concerned, it’s a miracle he makes it to the facility at all. By the time they land the bruises are creeping up his neck, into his blood-streaked face. He looks like he’s already a corpse.

Tony feels weirdly distant as he follows the medical team into the emergency bay. Numb. He shouldn’t be there—he’s just in the way—but nobody stops him. They work in near-silence for the first five minutes, checking his vitals, starting a transfusion of Peter’s own blood—they keep a supply for everyone with genetic enhancements, since they can’t take regular donors—packing warming gels and blankets all around his prone body, because the dunk in the river and all the blood loss has left him hypothermic, and they need to stimulate as much blood flow as they can.

Tony wonders if the reason they are all so quiet is because they have come to the same conclusion he has. And it’s this thought that makes him break it. Because if that’s what they’re thinking, then it’s going to come true.

“What’s happening to him?” he says.

His voice seems to echo in the wide, white space of the medical bay. But he must imagine this.

To everyone’s surprise, it’s FRIDAY’s voice that answers. 

“Peter has a virus of alien origins, which is attacking the structural integrity of his red blood cells, causing internal bleeding,” she says. “Drs Banner and Strange have been working with Peter for the past week to find a solution, but have yet to discover one.”

Tony has programmed FRIDAY to stay calm in emergencies, but her cool tone now sounds utterly out of place, makes her seem more like an AI than she ever has before. Tony is so stunned by it that he can’t process what she’s just said for a few seconds. 

But when he does, the feeling floods back to his limbs. It comes on a rush of anger. 

“What the  _ hell _ are you talking about?” he says.    

“Peter has a virus—”

“I heard  _ what _ you said, I’m wondering how it’s something you’re able to say at all. Who wrote the protocol to keep that out of my alerts? Why wasn’t I told?”

“Peter asked that Dr. Banner keep it private until there was a cure available. Dr. Banner was the one who wrote the protocol for me to keep it secret except in case of an emergency like this one. Sorry Boss,” she adds, and at least she sounds contrite. “I would have said something if I could have.”

Tony’s anger rises toward a crescendo; he’s about to start yelling, but then something FRIDAY said clunks into place, and the anger is replaced by a rapid, sinking feeling in his gut. 

“He told Bruce not to tell me.”

He looks back down at Peter’s bruised body, the blood that is drying on his cheeks even as more flows out of his nose and ears, the flow of it sluggish but steady. The kid didn’t want to tell him he was  _ dying _ . He didn’t even think he could come to Tony with something as big as this.

And whose fault is that?

It’s all guilt now, no fury left in him, but before Tony can begin to drown in it, an alarm screams. 

Peter’s eyes fly open and he draws in a horrifying, fruitless breath of air. 

And suddenly nobody is quiet anymore. There is a great commotion of movement and shouting, all of it barely rising above the sound of Peter struggling to breathe, a struggle which is clearly doing nothing. What little bit of his skin is still visible under the splattered bruising and streaked blood is already blue with hypoxia, but that blue is deepening right before Tony’s eyes. 

And yet, somehow, Peter is conscious. He flails under the many hands of the medical team, who are trying to keep him from rolling off the table, but incredibly Peter is still stronger than them; he manages to fling two nurses to the ground before Tony thinks to move. 

He pushes through the swarm of people surrounding Peter, puts a hand on the kid’s forehead, and says, in a voice that is stronger than he could possibly have imagined he could manage, “Look at me.”

Peter’s eyes swing back and forth in his skull a few times, like he’s having a fit, and then come to rest on Tony’s face. There is a second of wild confusion, then recognition settles.

There’s no apology left in Peter’s expression. No more guilt. There’s just terror, a raw fear that Tony has seen there before, as his lips work worthlessly to draw in a breath that won’t come. 

He only has Peter’s attention for a second, but it feels like an eternity.

Then there is a sickening sound, like green wood snapping, as someone forces a chest tube in between the kid’s ribs. 

Tony forces himself not to look down, but he knows the fluid around Peter’s lungs must be draining, because finally, finally, Petter inhales, his whole body shuddering so hugely that Tony loses his grip on his forehead, and before he can say or do anything else, he’s pushed away from the table as the medical team presses in around it once more. 

They close in, and block Peter from Tony’s sight.

He backs away. There is blood all over the front of his suit, on his hands. All at once it’s all he can sense or feel, this blood, sticking to his clothes, his skin, underneath his fingernails. 

Gasping, Tony turns toward the door to the medical bay, beyond which is a surgical sink. Washing his hands suddenly the only thing he can think of. 

He runs straight into Bruce.

Bruce is wearing surgical scrubs, which he must have just pulled out of the bin by the door. His hair is still wet and he smells like river water. He’s shaking all over, the way he does when he has just transformed back into himself after a stint as the Hulk. 

Tony has shoved him against the wall before he knows what he’s doing. 

Bruce doesn’t say anything as Tony presses his face so close to his they can feel each other’s breath. Tony doesn’t say anything either, just wraps his fists tighter into the scrubs, leaving dark streaks of blood on the blue fabric.

When Bruce speaks, his voice is soft.

“Do you really want to piss me off right now, Tony?”

Tony drops him like he’s just caught fire. He stumbles back.

Bruce straightens.

“Get out,” he says.

“I’m not—”

“Get out, Tony.” His voice softens. “I’ve got him, okay?”

And, before Tony can object, Bruce pushes him out the door and into the hallway. 

Tony catches just a glimpse of Bruce, running toward the table that holds Peter, and then the door swings shut over them.


	7. The Waiting

There’s no waiting area on the medical floor of the facility. The place serves as home to so many of the Avengers that it was deemed unnecessary; whenever someone on the team is injured enough, they all tend to gather in the common area, or retreat to their rooms, if the circumstances surrounding the injury are the type that calls for reflection—or, more likely considering the self-blaming types hero work tends to attract, brooding.

Tony, on the other hand, has never been much of a brooder. Blaming himself? Hell yeah. But pacing and agonizing are not his flavors of melodrama: when something is broken he likes to fix it. He has often thought that this, more than his genius or his money, is his real superpower: Tony turns problems into solutions. He turned his family shame into Iron Man. He turned Sokovia into the Accords. And sure, those things came with their own complications, but no one ever said a solution had to be flawless to be a solution. He keeps everything moving forward, at least, keeps the Avengers from losing their propulsive momentum, because to do so would be to risk death by sudden deceleration. 

Tony doesn’t brood. He sticks his arm elbow-deep in an issue and doesn’t pull it out until he’s cut the red wire—or better yet, turned it into an explosive he can use.

But there’s nothing to put his hands to here. The bomb has gone off. And this time the bomb was a teenage kid, full of blood, exploding from the inside out.  

After Bruce kicks him out, he goes to his lab. It’s not really intentional; that’s just where his legs take him in times of emergency. He’s running on autopilot, too, when he grabs a tablet and watches all of the footage of Peter getting his blood drawn and reads all of Bruce’s notes on the virus, which have been unlocked by the emergency protocol he wrote in FRIDAY’s server. It’s bleak. Bruce has been working at this seemingly nonstop for almost five days, and he has come up with virtually nothing. For a while Tony is furious. Furious that they didn’t come to him. Furious that this should be the one thing Bruce turns out to be incompetent at. But then he rereads the notes. And rereads them, and rereads them, and does some research of his own while he’s at it, and he knows Bruce has done his best.

It’s not his fault his best has amounted to nothing.

And then Tony can’t be in the lab anymore. It happens in a fell swoop and he gets to his feet, dropping the tablet to the floor with a clatter. The lab is where solutions are made, and suddenly, irrationally, Tony feels like he is desecrating it by remaining.

But he can’t go to his rooms. He’s not ready to brood and pace, because those are the hallmarks of hopelessness, and he cannot go there. Maybe if Pepper was around, if she knew what was going on, but she’s in Southeast Asia and he can’t call her because if he calls her he will have to tell her why and there are no words in him to explain it. Not a single one. 

So he heads to the common area. The unofficial waiting room. Waiting is almost as terrible as brooding, but he’ll take even the slight step up at this point.

This turns out to be a mistake. 

He’s still fumbling, still half-automated, when he stumbles back upstairs and into the living area, so it takes him a moment, upon bursting inside, to realize that there are six people sitting on the couches at the center of the wide space, and that all eyes have turned to him upon his arrival. 

Tony freezes. His brain does too. Sudden deceleration. He has just enough time to take mental attendance—Sam and Clint and Natasha are there, standing in a protective semi-circle around May and two kids about Peter’s age, a boy and a girl, who Tony doesn’t recognize—and then every face in the room goes slack. May puts a hand to her mouth and Sam steps in between her and Tony while Clint grabs the kids by their arms and wheels them around, pulling them toward the kitchen even as the pair go wide-eyed and strain to keep gawking.

It’s baffling. Tony can’t make sense of any of it until Natasha comes charging toward him, grabs his upper arm, and marches him out of the room.

“Hey, hey, hey.” He snaps back to himself at her grip, manages to shake it off in the hall. “I thought we graduated from the manhandling phase of our relationship years ago, what are you—?”

“You’re covered in blood.”

It’s blunt, as is Natasha’s way, though not cruel. Still, Tony’s stomach sinks as he looks down and realizes that, though he scrubbed his hands in the surgical sink until the skin was raw, he hasn’t changed out of his ruined three-piece charcoal-gray Tom Ford, which is stained dark red from collar to knees.

For a minute it’s all Tony can do to stare down at his front. When he looks up, Natasha’s expression is changing from frustrated disbelief to concern. Her brow furrows; she glances over her shoulder at the open doorway to the common area and then takes Tony’s arm again, more gently this time. 

“No,” Tony says, as she starts to steer him away, toward the sleeping quarters. He thinks of the expression on May’s face when she spotted him, thinks of how it was clear that she knew right away whose blood he is covered in. “No, I need to explain—”

“Not like this you don’t,” says Natasha. “You’re changing first. They’ll take care of May.”

Of course. Of course, that makes sense, but Tony is still swallowing bile as he and Natasha get into the elevator and they head up to his room. They make the ride in silence, because Tony’s brain is still trying to catch up to whatever happened just now, and Natasha is staring into the middle distance, which she only does when she is puzzling something out. Or brooding. 

But when the elevator dings and she grabs his elbow again, this time to guide him down the abandoned hallway, a few things snap into place. 

One of these things has a faint irritation attached to it, so he latches onto that one, because irritation is the least painful of the emotions swirling in his chest right now. 

“Who brought those kids?” he says. It seems like a reasonable question, even if it does come off snappish. If there were no kids in his living room, he’d only be responsible for traumatising Peter’s one living relative, not a couple of doe-eyed pubescent wunderkinds, who, in a glance, reminded him so much of Peter, of Peter’s youth, that he wants to kick something just remembering it. “When did my superhero training facility become a center for wayward tweens?”

“They’re Peter’s friends,” says Natasha. There is a faint disbelief in her voice, like she is simultaneously baffled by the question and concerned that Tony would ask such a thing at all. “They were at his apartment when we went to get his aunt, they wanted to come along.”

“And you  _ let _ them?” They are in his suite now, and Tony tugs his jacket off without remembering to unbutton it, so the buttons pop off and go flying. “Jesus, does the term  _ secret identity _ not mean anything to anyone anymore? After all the shit I’ve gotten into with the UN to keep that kid’s name out of the Accords, you people throw it away for a couple of… Harry Potter knockoffs? Just because they  _ asked _ ?”

“They know who he is,” says Natasha, watching him undress like she has half a mind to restrain him, though even when Tony realizes he is struggling out of his clothes like a madman out of a straitjacket, he can’t rein himself in. “They told us about the virus on the way over.”

Now Tony freezes, his shirt off his shoulders but still tucked into his pants. Blood has soaked all the way to his undershirt. 

“How did they know?”

“They said he told them. Tony, are you—”

But Tony can’t hear the rest of her sentence. All of a sudden the only thing that matters is getting out of these stupid fucking clothes, but he can’t make sense of them—they’re too tight, too restricting, and he can’t get a hold of any of the right edges to pull them off. They’re suffocating him— _ that sound, a fist around a plastic bag, coming out of the kid’s mouth—the look on his face when Tony put a hand on his forehead, a desperate plea in his eyes, like he was asking Tony to stop this, to stop all the blood coming out of his nose and mouth and ears—but Tony can’t, he can’t reach his arm in and cut the wire, he can’t—he can’t— _ and he can’t even get his shirt off and—

And suddenly Tony is on the floor, pressed against the wall near the bathroom door. Natasha is crouching in front of him. Her hand is on his chest, and she’s saying something, but it takes a few seconds of blinking hard, focusing on her lips, to figure out what. 

“Breathe,” she orders. “Like this. In. Out.”

With an effort, Tony follows her command, follows her as she demonstrates it. The first breath stutters, and the sound he makes brings an image of Peter, inhaling blood as he sucks in a breath to apologize, but Tony shoves it away. Draws another breath. And another. 

Finally his breathing evens. He sits up straighter, shaking. 

He hasn’t had a panic attack that bad in years, and never in front of anyone on his team. As soon as oxygen returns, shame arrives with it, and he breaks eye contact with Natasha the second he is able, already staggering to his feet. 

Natasha straightens and takes a step back while Tony braces himself against the doorway until his legs stop shaking. There’s no pity in her expression, just concern. Tony is grateful.

After a second, she makes a move like she is about to step forward again, cautious, watching his face. Tony swallows, nods, even though he still can’t look her in the eye.

She closes the gap and, gently, helps him remove his shirt the rest of the way, followed by his undershirt. She doesn’t even glance at the arc reactor scar, for which Tony’s gratitude triples. 

Natasha wraps the clothes into a ball but doesn’t move for the laundry chute. Tony hopes she’s thinking the same thing he is. He hopes she is going to burn them. 

She gives him a sweeping look.

“I’m gonna be frank, Stark, and let you know that I’d really prefer it if you can get the pants yourself.”

Tony lets out a bark of short but genuine laughter. “I think Pepper would share that sentiment.”

“Yeah?” She raises an eyebrow. “Well then you’re definitely on your own. Pepper is way scarier than you are.” She frowns. “Are you gonna be able to pull it together?”

Tony nods. 

“Okay. Come down when you’re ready. I’m sure FRIDAY will let you know if there are any updates in the meantime.”

“That’s affirmative, Boss,” FRIDAY says.

Natasha nods and leaves, skimming his discarded jacket off the floor as she does. 

Tony’s glad she doesn’t drag the moment out. Glad she leaves before he stumbles out of his pants and into the shower. Glad that FRIDAY is so good at keeping secrets (well, glad that she’s good at keeping  _ his _ secrets. He’s going to have a serious talk with her about who is allowed to program what if— _ when _ —Peter is out of the woods), because he doesn’t have to worry about anyone else seeing just how close he comes to losing it again when the water running off him turns red, or how he has to hold his breath and close his eyes until it’s clear again, or how he lingers, fighting his own thoughts, until his skin is red again, this time from the heat, and then for a long time beyond.

* * *

 

Tony is expecting there to be some news about Peter by the time he gets back downstairs. He’s almost holding his breath from the anticipation, because it’s pretty much miraculous that they haven’t heard anything yet—which can only mean Peter has survived this long. Tony almost can’t fathom it, even as he clings to it. 

There was just… so much blood. 

But there’s still nothing when he walks into the common area for a second time. No Bruce. No messages from FRIDAY. Just Sam, who is standing by the broad bay windows with Wanda—who Tony only now realizes was missing before, and who looks like she has been crying, though she’s not anymore—and Clint and Natasha, who are sitting on the couch with May and Peter’s friends, talking to them in almost inaudible voices. 

They all look up again, all stop talking, but this time nobody blanches. Tony is clean, if slightly damp. 

May stands abruptly. She is still wearing her pink hospital scrubs, her hair in a haphazard bun, but she doesn’t have any of the telltale signs of recent tears. May Parker is a woman who is accustomed to tragedy.

_ This isn’t a tragedy _ , he reminds himself.  _ Not yet. _

Tony sees everyone flinch as she strides toward him. He manages not to, though just barely. He knows they are all thinking the same thing he is: he was the one who called Peter out to that fight. He’s the one who’s been stuffing his obligation to mentor the kid in the furthest, darkest corners, making Peter think he didn’t give a damn, making Peter think he couldn’t tell Tony about any of this.

He expects her to slap him. He braces for it, but doesn’t try to avoid it. 

But May stops short about a foot away from him, meets his eye, and holds it for a moment. Her hands hang by her side. 

“Are you okay?” she says. 

Tony’s brain fizzles, the fuze of the conflict he was expecting going out in a puff of smoke. 

“What?” he says. 

“I asked if you’re okay. Clint told me what happened” —her voice quavers and she takes a breath, regains it— “and MJ and Ned filled in the rest. God, Tony, the look on your face… come sit down, okay?”

Tony is so baffled that he starts to follow her as she turns back to the couch, then stops abruptly when the absurdity of this interaction catches up to him. 

“Are you…? You’re joking, right?”

May turns back to look at him.

“May, I’m the reason your kid is downstairs right now. Trace this back to the source, I’m it. Why aren’t you… murdering me right now? Why aren’t you furious?”

He says it like a reminder, expects it to land like one. For her to remember that yes, she is furious, and that when all of this is over Tony will be lucky if he gets a glimpse of Peter passing on the street thirty years from now, because there’s no way he’s going to be allowed back into the kid’s life.

But May just looks sad. Exhausted. Her eyes shine, but still, no tears fall. 

“He didn’t tell me either, Tony,” she says. 

There’s a beat. Tony swallows.

May sighs, tilts her head at the couch. 

“Come on,” she says. “Meet Peter’s friends.”

This time Tony follows obediently. The couches at the center of the common area are arranged in a circle around a broad coffee table; May resumes her seat next to the kids and Tony takes the one opposite them, only aware of how badly he is aching when he finally sits. 

The kids stare at him. Or—the boy stares, his eyes as round as half dollars. The girl has a sweep of dark hair across her forehead, and the eyes peering out from under it are less awed, more calculating. It’s not an expression Tony is used to getting from anyone under the age of twenty, most of whom can’t remember a time when they didn’t know Iron Man’s name. But when he meets her eye, expecting her to look away, she narrows hers and holds his gaze.

Since he’s very much not in the mood to squirm under the glare of a twiggy little teenage overachiever, he turns to the boy, raises his eyebrows. 

“The done thing is usually your name, in this situation,” he says. “I’m guessing you already know mine.”

The boy makes a squeaking sound. The girl elbows him in the ribs. 

“This is Ned,” she says, and her surly voice matches her expression. “I’m MJ.”

“Ned.” It’s Tony’s turn to narrow his eyes. “You’re the kid who turned off the Training Wheels protocol in Peter’s old suit.”

Ned lets out a yelp of hysterical laughter and then snaps his mouth shut. 

“Uh-huh,” says Tony. “Well, if you ever learn to speak, Ned, and subsequently decide to search for a job—you know, after you’ve graduated twelfth grade, at least—be sure to give me a call.”

Ned goes so red Tony feels a faint worry that he might pass out. But he doesn’t—just goes very still and resumes his petrified silence. 

It’s sort of funny. At least, it’s the kind of thing Tony would have a lot of fun with, under any other circumstance. But he’s too exhausted to revel in the effect he has on teenage nerds, too on edge with the waiting. If he’s honest, he’s still a little irritated at the presence of Ned and MJ, both of them out of place amongst these superpowered, super-trained cluster of people: misfits among misfits.

But—no. It’s not their lack of superpowers. It’s their gawky, awkward youth, which, though teenagers don’t tend to recognize it, makes them out of place anywhere. At least in the eyes of adults—which, somehow, Tony is. 

And yet he has this connection with Peter, who is gawkier and more awkward than either of his friends, and who Tony can’t seem to disentangle from his own messed up life. Peter, who is bleeding out downstairs because of it. 

( _ He’s  _ not _ , though, he can’t be. Can’t think like that. No news is good news—cling to it, keep clinging. _ )   

He glances at Natasha and Clint, who are sitting on May’s other side, to Sam and Wanda, who are still by the window but are watching the cluster at the center of the room. All of their eyes keep darting back and forth from the door. But no one appears in it.

It occurs to him how rare it is for them all to be gathered together in such stillness. He’s not used to being in the same room with so many teammates, all of them unmoving. He hates it. He’s already itching to leave, but he can’t think of a single place to go. 

Still, he’s so distracted by this itch that he doesn’t notice Ned trying to get his attention until he somehow finds his voice enough to clear his throat and speak. 

“Mister—um—Tony Stark? Sir?”

Tony looks back at him.

“That is my full title,” he says. “What’s up ki—Ned?” 

Ned clears his throat again, working up his courage. 

“Um, I just wanted to say we’re—I’m really sorry.”

“I think it’s safe to say I’ve moved far, far beyond the Training Wheels debacle, Ned.”

“No, it’s not—I mean—” He glances at MJ, as if searching for some confirmation, but she has dropped her eyes to look at her hands and doesn’t look up even as he waits for her to. He goes on in a whisper. “Sorry we didn’t stop him.”

Tony’s expression goes fixed as Ned looks at his feet. MJ is staring determinedly at her hands now, her right hand a fist, her left wrapped tightly around it. 

He’s been so caught up in their youth, he’s missed their guilt. They’re not just gawky, awkward teenagers: they’re gawky, awkward teenagers who have just followed a bunch of superheroes to a glorified ER waiting room, where they’ve watched one of the most famous men in the world burst in covered in their friend’s blood. 

They’re terrified, and Tony is an idiot.

But Tony doesn’t say anything. He just stares.

It’s May who comes to his rescue. 

“Oh, honey.” She reaches over and grabs Ned’s hand in one of hers, and places the other over MJ’s. “Both of you, look at me.”

Reluctantly, they both raise their eyes. 

“I want you to understand something, okay? So you listen really closely, because this is important: none of this is your fault.”

“We should have called you,” MJ says. “I thought—”

May shakes her head sharply. “No,” she says. “You did exactly what good friends should have done in that situation. You listened. I know it might not seem like it, but adults do sometimes remember what it’s like to be teenagers. For whatever reason, Peter didn’t think he could come to us with this” —she makes brief eye contact with Tony— “but it makes me so glad to know he has friends like you that he could talk to. And that’s it. I’m not angry. I’m just grateful. Okay?”

They look uncertain, but they both nod, and May draws them both into a brief hug. When she pulls away they all look in opposite directions, hiding various iterations of teary eyes.

Tony coughs gruffly, and they look at him.

“Just to—uh, tag on here,” he says, “there’s no playbook for any of this. I know from the outside it looks like we have a handle on things a lot of the time, but most of those times we’re just figuring it out as we go. You do what you can in the moment, and you hope it’s enough. And that’s exactly what you guys did. For the record, I’m also glad Peter has friends he trusts enough to invite into this… whatever this insanity is. Trust me, he needs you.”

MJ recovers the quickest.

“‘Just wing it’ is super comforting advice coming from the man who has to save the world every six months,” she says.

Tony raises an eyebrow.

“And suddenly I’m getting why Peter is into you, you Ally Sheedy wannabe.”

And—oh. Somehow Tony has inadvertently stumbled upon what is, no doubt, this stern, calculating girl’s one soft spot: she flushes. 

He doesn't mention it. Let no one ever say Tony Stark is  _ completely _ without tact.

“Anyway,” says Ned, rubbing his eyes and not quite succeeding in reining himself in as quickly as MJ did, “I wouldn’t exactly say Peter invited us in. More like repeatedly revealed himself? Without meaning to?”

A strange sensation is creeping up Tony’s neck, into his jaw. He recognizes it, but he can’t believe it’s happening now, in this moment—even less can he believe it when he glances up and sees that the same thing is happening on the faces of Clint and Natasha, and Wanda and Sam, who have crept closer while they’ve been talking. 

Tony smiles.

“Yeah?” he says. “I wanted to ask how that happened. Seems like the kid can’t escape people walking in on him in his onesie.”

And Ned launches into the story, which, unsurprisingly somehow, involves a lot of Legos. By the time Ned is describing how May walked in on them, Peter in his underwear and Ned surrounded by the ruins of their Death Star, something slightly miraculous has happened: they are all laughing. 

Before the moment can pass, May jumps in with her story of finding him in the suit. Tony knows this one, and even though, in his memory, it ends with several very long, very loud conversations between May and none other than himself, it gains levity in the retelling. He laughs along with the others. Joins in, as they take turns recounting their favorite moments with Peter, both in the suit and out. Everyone seems to have one; Clint and Sam take turns describing Peter’s epic takedown of Ant-Man in Germany last year. Wanda regales them all with the tale of Peter and the Doom Bots in Manhattan, has them in stitches recalling how Peter rescued an abandoned terrier from under a car and then managed to fight off half a dozen bots with the struggling dog tucked under one arm. Even Natasha chimes in to tell about how, on a separate (and apparently top-secret; even Tony doesn’t know what she’s referring to) mission in Brooklyn, she was sidelined by the sight of Spider-Man nearly having his mask ripped off by an overly-enthusiastic gaggle of grade-schoolers who were climbing him like a tree. 

It’s one of those unexpected, inexplicable moments that Tony could never have predicted and probably won’t be able to describe, if anyone ever asks in the future. The weight of why they are here doesn’t disappear—it is still bearing down, ‘ _ what if _ ’ looming over them like a guillotine blade. And yet at the same time they are there for a common purpose, and that purpose has chosen to make itself known through the lightness of laughter: they’re there for Peter, and Peter can’t be known through the darkness of whatever terrible possibility they are refusing to speak.

They’re so caught up in reminiscing that they don’t notice Bruce in the doorway until he says quietly, “Excuse me.”

The laughter stops, as abruptly as if it has been severed by a knife. Smiles slide off faces. Ned shrinks into the couch; MJ goes utterly still.

The adults all get to their feet. 

It’s maddening how quickly reality comes rushing back in. A moment ago Tony was laughing; now he has to remind himself how to breathe as Bruce shuffles a little further into the room, his shoulders drawn in tight like he’s trying not to be noticed, even though he has just become a black hole at the center of everyone’s focus. He’s still wearing scrubs, but not the same ones he was wearing when Tony shoved him against the wall, and Tony knows it’s because Bruce, at least, had the good sense to change out of his blood-soaked clothes before walking into a room full of people. 

Bruce can’t pause for more than a second before he speaks, but it seems to drag on into hours, the anticipation slowing time to an unbearable pace. 

“He’s stable,” he says.

The collective sigh is audible. Behind Tony, Wanda sinks back onto the couch and buries her face in her hands. Clint grips Ned’s shoulder. Sam has to turn away for a second.

But May and Tony stay still, both of them watching Bruce, who watches them back. Tony isn’t sure how to categorize the little flame in his chest when he meets Bruce’s eye—is it anger? exhaustion?—but out of the corner of his eye he can see the expression on May’s face, and he knows that she, at least, is not feeling as forgiving of Dr. Banner as she was of Ned and MJ.

“He’s still out,” Bruce goes on. “He will be for a while. They want to get him settled in his room before he has visitors so… Tony. May. Can I talk to you in the hall? I think I owe you one hell of an explanation.” 


	8. The Ultimatum

Tony takes it upon himself to lead them into one of the conference rooms off the main hall, where they mitigate at least some of the risk of being overheard. This is immediately proven to be a good decision, because as soon as the door slides shut behind them, May rounds on Bruce. 

All of the authoritative parental calm she was emanating in front of the kids is gone; now her face is white, her hands shaking as she tries to hold them steady at her sides. Tony recognizes her body language—it’s what he expected to be greeted with earlier, what he was on the receiving end of when May found out about Spider-Man. 

“You know I’m a nurse, right?” she says. “I know what stable means. It means his condition isn’t changing, it doesn’t mean he’s fine. How is he really?”

The worry that had receded, though not disappeared, at Bruce’s earlier pronouncement, returns with a sharp edge in Tony’s chest, and he turns to look at Bruce.

Bruce looks almost as pale as May. His hair is plastered to his head by river water and sweat, and the circles under his eyes are almost disturbingly deep. In any other circumstance Tony would stop this line of questioning immediately: Hulk-outs are ten times more likely when Bruce doesn’t have a chance to rest immediately after one prior, but Tony doesn’t have the faculties to be sensible right now; he wants the answer to May’s question as much as she does.

And Bruce, for his part, does not ask for the space he obviously needs. He stands straight and looks May in the eye, and doesn’t let his voice waver as he replies.

“He’s not good, May. He lost… an insane amount of blood. If Wanda hadn’t slowed the bleeding on the bank, I don’t think he would have made it here. The transfusions saved him for now, but we used almost our entire supply just to get him to start clotting, and eventually the virus is going to build up in the transfused blood, too. Obviously we can’t draw more, so if there’s another episode like this, we have very few options.”

Tony’s eyes move back to May in time to see her clench her jaw. Her expression is tight, controlled, but at last, a single tear rolls down her cheek, and though she wipes it away furiously before it lands, it makes Tony’s own throat constrict. 

“You kept this from me,” she says. 

“I know,” says Bruce. For the first time, his voice tightens. The shame in it is almost palpable, but May doesn’t back down.

“No, I don’t think you do,” she says, pointing toward the door. “That’s my kid down there. My  _ sixteen year old kid _ , who has so much stupid responsibility and guilt and worry that he didn’t feel like he could come to me with something like this. And maybe that’s on me” —Tony opens his mouth to object, but May puts up a hand, not taking her eyes off of Bruce— “but whatever work I need to do to convince that sweet, smart,  _ burdened _ kid that I am the adult—the  _ parent _ —in this situation, I should not have to do it for the grown fucking men in his life. You act like he’s one of you, but he’s—” She laughs. It’s slightly hysterical. “God, he’s sixteen. I have to sign his permission slips for field trips. He has to ask me for pocket money to go to the movies with his friends. How— _ how _ could you keep something like this from me? How could you possibly have justified that in your head? And you—you  _ know  _  him. You  _ knew  _ he wouldn’t stop or—or even slow down. He can’t, he’s got this idea that everything is his responsibility, and you  _ know _ that. But if I had known, I could have done something. I wouldn’t have let him run off after that maniac in Times Square. I would have stayed home with him today. None of this—none of this was  _ necessary _ .”  

She’s crying now. Part of Tony wants to comfort her, but the larger, more sensible part of him knows that this would be a terrible idea. May already looks furious with herself for letting her control slip this much, and besides, she doesn’t have any eyes for him right now. 

For his part, though, Tony’s own anger is waning the longer May talks. She’s right—of course she’s right. But it doesn’t make him want to tear Bruce apart, like it clearly does May. It just makes him think of his own relationship with Peter—how easy it is to forget that when he takes off the mask, unlike the rest of them, he has to get up the next morning and go take pop quizzes and dodge spitballs. How he’s kept similarly large secrets from May, with the misguided notion that because of the coincidence of his superpowers, Peter is somehow exempt from the same rules that apply to every other junior in high school: the insecurity. The secrecy. The painful, drawn-out discovery of self, which never really goes away but is at peak agony during this time. Things, in short, that one shouldn’t have to deal with alone. Things one needs a parent for. 

And for that, because life has been so very unfair to Peter Parker, he has just one person left, albeit a good one: Peter has May. May has Peter. 

To betray that was unconscionable of Bruce, but it’s harder when Tony thinks of all the ways he’s done it himself. Even more so when he thinks of how, had he behaved better on a great many occasions, May might  _ not _ be all Peter has in the parental-figure department. 

But he also can’t step in to save Bruce, to try to absolve him, or to absolve himself. It’s not the time. May has earned her anger.

Apparently Bruce not only agrees, but believes she is entitled to even more of it, because the next words out of his mouth are,

“This is more my fault than you know.”

May stops crying. Tony looks up at Bruce sharply. Bruce takes a deep breath.

“I was trying to… to slow the virus’s progress while we waited for Strange. I gave Peter a temporary solution and I didn’t—I wasn’t clear enough about the potential side effects. Or—you’re right, I should have realized he wouldn’t… that he couldn’t stop just because someone older said so. I should never have gone to the river, I should have just… made sure he stayed put.” He takes another breath. “I think he may have taken too much of the supplement I gave him so he could help, which triggered an autoimmune response. His immune system started attacking his own red blood cells instead of the virus, and since the red blood cells are where the virus lives, they started attacking right back. It’s what caused the bleed on the bank.”

Now May and Tony are both staring at him, equally stony-faced, neither of them sure how to respond. May has to swallow, over and over, convulsive, before she can form words.

“Is it… will it still slow it down?” she says. 

Slowly, looking more forlorn than Tony has ever seen him look, Bruce shakes his head. 

“It’s more likely that I’ve sped it up,” he says. His voice shakes now, but he seems determined to be honest, even if that means being harsh, to make up for his earlier omissions. “I can try to amend the formula, but if we try to reintroduce it now, his body will just see it as an invader all over again.”

“You’re not giving him  _ anything  _ else,” May says, and the sentence catches on a sob. “You’re not going  _ near  _ him, do you understand?”

She starts forward, and finally, Tony moves. He steps between them, arms out, and halts her.

“She’s right, Tony,” says Bruce. Defeated. 

“Okay,” says Tony, “well, right or wrong, May, I’m still not going to put money on you if you decide to go one-on-one with Bruce’s Little Green Problem right now, sorry. You’re about to try to murder the one person in the world who is absolutely unmurderable, and since you’re not nearly as invincible, why don’t you go downstairs instead?”

May doesn’t look convinced. In fact, from the fire in her eyes, she looks like she would like to test the theory that the Hulk is invincible right now. And from what Tony knows of that fire, May just might do it.

“Hey,” he says, lowering his voice. “May.”

Finally, though her expression doesn’t change, she moves her gaze from Bruce to Tony. He shakes his head.

“You’re not wrong about any of this, May,” he says, “but mostly about the fact that your kid needs you. Please. Go downstairs.”

May holds his eye for a drawn-out moment. Then she lets out a long, slow breath through her nose, deflating. She nods.

Tony lets out a breath of his own, his one of relief.

“Are you coming?” says May. Her voice still has a harsh edge, and she avoids looking at Bruce as she takes a small step back.

“I’ll meet you down there. FRIDAY, can you show her the way?”

“I’m on it, Boss.”

May nods again and leaves. 

They both watch the door slide shut behind her, and then Tony turns to face Bruce. 

“I’m sorry, Tony,” says Bruce. 

Tony’s jaw works for a second as he deliberates his next words. 

“Peter told you not to tell me,” he says.

Cautiously, Bruce nods. “It’s not an excuse,” he says.

“No, it’s not,” says Tony. He sighs. “What are we looking at, time-wise?”

A pause. “Maybe two or three days.”

Tony nods, his jaw clenched so tightly he feels like his teeth might break.

“And Strange?”

“Still gone. I haven’t heard from him.”

“Okay.” Tony clenches his hands into fists and stuffs them into his pockets to hide their trembling. “Okay. Get back in the lab, then. Figure this out. Buy us some time, at least. Got it?”

“Tony…”

“I don’t care what May said, and neither will she if you can figure out a way to stop this thing, okay? Just do it.”

And he turns away, about to step toward the door, stops at the last second. 

“And Bruce?”

“Yeah?” 

“I know you were… I know you did what you thought was best. That kid’s a real pain in the ass in that arena.”

He glances over his shoulder just in time to see Bruce crack a weak smile.

“Kinda worth it though, isn’t he?”

“You’re goddamn right he is.”

And this time Bruce joins him as he resumes his course toward the exit. 

As soon as they do leave the conference room, they round a corner toward the lift, which will take them to their separate destinations, and nearly walk into MJ.

She is lurking not far from the door to the conference room, and if it weren’t for the fact that all of their rooms have better soundproofing than the vacuum of space itself, Tony would be worried that she’s been dropping some eaves. Even with this being a possibility, however, there is something in her expression when they halt in front of her that makes Tony suspect she knows exactly what they have just been discussing. 

She gives Tony a swift, discerning look. It is just as unsettling as her earlier calculating stare. Then she turns her attention to Bruce. 

“Are you Dr. Banner?” she says, though she must know he is.

Bruce nods. “You’re Peter’s friend,” he says. “Um…?”

“MJ,” she says. Pauses. “You’re smaller in person than I thought you’d be.”

“Only half the time,” says Tony.

She gives him such an intense silencing look that he closes his mouth before he’s noticed what he’s done. 

MJ holds a hand out to Bruce. Only then does Tony realize that she has been clenching that fist shut the entire time she’s been here, and sure enough when Bruce reaches out, the paper that she hands him is crumpled, so Tony can’t read what it says, though he does catch that the edges are slightly burnt as Bruce smooths it out and reads it.

Bruce stares at the little paper for a long time. Far longer than it should take to read whatever it contains. Tony is about to snatch it out of his hand when, seemingly automatically, he tucks it into his back pocket.

“Uh,” says Tony, “hasn’t anyone told you passing notes is rude? Are you going to share with the class, or are you embarrassed because you didn’t get Brad Pitt and a mansion?”

But there is no humor in MJ’s expression when she looks back at him. 

“So apparently you’re old as shit,” she says. “And it’s private.”

And before Tony can reply to this—perhaps true, but nonetheless cutting—statement, MJ turns sharply and heads back toward the common area.

Tony raises an eyebrow at Bruce, but evidently he is no more in the mood for sharing than she was. He just shakes his head. 

“Go see Peter, Tony,” he says. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

And he gets into an elevator, keeping his back turned to Tony as the doors slide shut over him.

* * *

 

Peter is still unconscious by the time Tony gets to the room in the medical bay, a fact for which he is unexpectedly grateful. It means Peter doesn’t catch the sharp intake of breath, nor the fact that Tony stops dead in the doorway, when he sees him.

It shouldn’t be shocking. Compared to how he looked four hours ago, this is a significant improvement. But somehow in the intervening time—which was filled with stories of Peter at his peak, Peter as Spider-Man—Tony has forgotten how badly the day has wrecked the kid. 

There’s no forgetting it now. Peter lays flat on the bed, sheets pulled up to his chest but his arms exposed, an IV of fluids in one, the last of the blood transfusion in the other. Both arms are still almost completely covered in bruises, though they seem to have faded some in the intervening time, Peter’s healing factor kicking back in with the aid of the fresh blood. But even with their edges fading to green and yellow, the bruises still look gruesome, though not as gruesome as the ones on his face. The oxygen mask only heightens the morbid effect, though it fogs with every breath that emerges from Peter’s slack mouth, and should serve as evidence of his aliveness.

Though Peter does not look up at Tony’s gasp, May does. She’s sitting by the bed, her head in her hands, and raises it when he arrives.  

“I lost my temper,” she says. 

Tony blinks, shakes his head to pull himself out of the shock of seeing Peter like this. 

“Good thing, too,” he says, stepping further into the room and pulling up a chair beside her. “I was beginning to suspect you might be superhuman. One Parker fighting in the name of truth and justice and all that crap is more than enough.”

She laughs, but it’s a strangled, desperate laugh, nothing like the one from upstairs. There’s no way for real humor to make an appearance with Peter like this, right in front of them. 

“Has he woken up at all yet?” Tony asks. 

May shakes her head. She reaches out, seemingly automatically, but stops just short of grabbing Peter’s hand. Tony knows why. He looks impossibly fragile, and even though he knows the bruises probably don’t hurt as badly as they look like they do, they give him that pit-of-the-stomach pain that only comes from seeing someone else badly injured. The last time he had it this bad was after Germany, with Rhodey. 

“I—uh, I don’t have to be here, if you…”

May shakes her head. “No, stay. It’ll mean a lot to him if you’re here when he wakes up.” 

They both look at Peter for a moment, watch the steady rise and fall of his chest until it begins to feel real, reassuring in its evenness. This is slightly offset by the chest tube, which snakes out of the side of his blankets into some apparatus that is, thankfully, underneath the bed, but Tony still forces himself not to look at it, lest he think too hard on the sound it made when it slid between the kid’s ribs. 

“He really looks up to you, you know,” says May. 

Tony closes his eyes for a moment, as if when he closes them Peter will be sitting up, his skin clear, his eyes bright. But when he opens them, it’s the same picture. 

“Yeah, well, there’s no accounting for taste I guess.” He scrubs a hand across his forehead. “Whatever it’s worth, May, I am sorry. Not just for this. For all the preceding… crap. I know better than anyone if you had a choice in who Peter looks up to, I’d be bottom of the list but… I will try to, you know, do better.”

And now Tony tries not to think of Bruce’s declaration— _ maybe three days _ —or his face just before he got on the elevator. It seems there is a lot he cannot touch at the moment. Like half of his world is on fire.

May tries for a weak smile. “Thank you,” she says. “And I wouldn’t say bottom of the list.” She hesitates, then adds, “Ever since Ben died—”

But she never finishes her sentence. Because at that moment, Peter takes a deep breath, and his eyes flutter open. 

May leans forward, but Tony leans back, ostensibly to give her some space, but really because suddenly, inexplicably, he finds himself fighting the urge to flee. But seeing as he  _ just _ made a promise to the contrary to May, he holds himself still as Peter’s eyes rove the room blearily and finally come to rest on his aunt. 

He makes a muffled sound and tries to lift his head, his eyes unfocused.

“No, stay,” says May. “Here, I’ll—”

She reaches around the side of the bed and lifts it to a half-raised position. Peter leans back into the pillows as she does, his eyes closed again; apparently this small movement has sapped what little energy he had. For a second Tony thinks he’s out again, but then Peter’s hand twitches, fingers groping the blanket, only stopping when May takes it gently in her own. 

“Hey,” she says. “Hey, Pete. You with us honey?”

“Mmuh,” Peter mumbles, almost inaudible beneath the oxygen mask. “Wha’” —deep inhale— “wha’ happen? I pass out again?”

May looks at a loss at this, so Tony takes it as his cue to jump in.

“Yup,” he says. “Yup, that’s what happened. You’re at HQ, kid.”

At Tony’s voice, Peter pries his eyes open once more, trying to get a better look at its owner, but almost the second he has Tony in his focus they slide shut. 

“Misser Stark,” he slurs, “sorry I did—didn’t—”

“Let’s make a deal, kid,” says Tony. “Never, ever apologize to me again, and we’ll call it even.”

Peter nods feebly, but Tony’s pretty sure he’s not taking any of this in at all. He’s about to tell him to just go back to sleep when May makes a small, pitchy noise that Tony only recognizes as a sob when he looks at her and sees that she is crying. 

“Well I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry, Peter. I knew something was up. You looked so burdened these last few weeks, and I didn’t want to push, but I should have known. I should have—”

“Shh.” Peter’s voice is half-absent from sleepiness, but somehow he manages to lift the hand that’s not wrapped in May’s and place it on her head as she ducks it to press her lips to his knuckles. “No. Not you. Me.”

May stifles the next small sob, lifts her head, and gently places Peter’s raised hand back at his side.

“It’s okay, honey,” she says.

But Peter is already asleep once more.

_ Now  _ Tony gets to his feet. May is still holding Peter’s other hand, watching him as he takes deep, even breaths. He’s taken care of. And now, at last, there are things to do. He has to figure out what’s going on with the frightened—but, unlike their counterpart, whole, at least—teenagers upstairs. He has to gather whatever intel he can on where Strange has disappeared to. He has to do whatever he can to help Bruce allay that horrible ultimatum, which is bleating in the back of his skull like a claxon— _ two days, maybe three. _

He puts a hand on May’s shoulder, squeezes.

“I’ll come back later,” he says. 

And, he thinks, though he doesn’t say it, with any luck he’ll have the solution to this thing by the time he does.


	9. The Awakening

There are hands on his chest and throat—massive, inhuman hands.

Peter struggles beneath them, but he’s weak; his efforts are feeble, and it doesn’t take him long to recognize that he’s not going to be able to break free on his own.

But when he opens his mouth to call for help, no sound comes out. The breath’s been crushed out of him. His eyes roll. He sinks into the dark.

It happens over and over again—the crushing weight, the consuming fear when the air won’t come, the widening dark—until Peter thinks he might go mad from the cycle.

And then, all at once, it ends.

Consciousness comes in a rush: one moment, he is struggling under the enormous pressure of his faceless attacker—the next, he is gasping awake, flailing under the much-slighter but still-disorienting pressure of another hand on his shoulder.

“Kid, kid. Hey, hey, hey, Peter. Take a breath.”

Peter does. It comes surprisingly easy, even though as he takes it he realizes there is something around his nose and mouth, and he reaches up automatically to remove it. Also surprisingly, hands reach out of nowhere to assist him, removing the oxygen mask and replacing it with a nasal cannula as the bed shifts into a more upright position.

Peter blinks, and the scene around him clarifies. The person responsible for the removal of the mask is a nurse, dressed in white scrubs. She smiles vaguely at him as she shifts the medical equipment around his bed, then nods and exits.

Which just leaves Tony.

It’s his hand on Peter’s shoulder, his eyes on Peter’s face, his own swimming into focus as Peter lifts his head and blinks the last of his nightmare away.

As he does, a memory of a different nightmare shifts into its place. A nightmare where he pours blood all over the ground at Tony’s feet. Where Tony’s face, stark white and terrified, looms above him and tells him to shut up when he tries to apologize, then puts a hand on his cheek, an apology of his own.

“Oh my God,” says Peter.

Tension Peter didn’t realize was there leaves Tony’s body all at once, and the difference wrought is so intense Peter can’t believe he didn’t see it before. Tony’s shoulders slump; his head goes loose on his neck and he drops his chin to his chest, letting out a breath that seems to deflate his whole body; but he doesn’t take his hand off Peter’s shoulder.

“‘Oh my God’ is an apt summary, though less colorful than what I would have chosen,” he says, but the sarcasm is diminished by the quaver in his voice. He raises his head. “You with us for real this time?”

By way of reply, Peter attempts to sit up.

“Ah ah ah.” Tony pushes him back down. “Let’s try for words before we start flailing out of the high-tech hospital bed. One more time. You with us, kid?”

“I’m…” Peter swallows, and the memory of blood in his throat is so fresh he can almost taste it now. “Where’s May?”

“She’s next door. I finally convinced her to get some sleep, so thanks for choosing this moment to return to the world of the living. I can look forward to a beat-down from a refreshed and renewed angry aunt when she wakes up.”

“Did Bruce tell you…?”

“About the alien virus re-enacting the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in your bloodstream? Funnily enough he did. Of course, your aunt’s not too happy about the circumstances surrounding the telling, but mistakes were made all around on that front.”

Things are beginning to clarify around him, items taking shape as the fog in his vision and his head recedes. He’s in a hospital room. There’s an IV in his right arm, and he aches all over, but otherwise he seems… relatively whole. When he glances down at his exposed forearm, the entire thing is covered in the ghosts of mostly-healed bruises, making his skin look faintly green, but the fact that they’re healing at all is kind of miraculous, considering what he remembers from the bank.

He swallows again and looks up at Mr. Stark as the phrase _mistakes were made all around_ settles in his brain and gains meaning. Then looks down again as the shame hits.

“Mr. Stark,” he rasps, “I am so, so sor—”

“Nah-ah!” Tony’s admonishment is only half a word—it comes out all choked off, and it makes Peter look up again, wondering if Tony has something stuck in his throat. But he’s fine, even though he does swallow convulsively before continuing. “Clearly you don’t remember our last conversation, but I’ll give you a pass since you were still missing half the blood in your body at the time. Jesus, Peter, I’m… I wasn’t looking for an apology, kid.”

Finally, he takes his hand from Peter’s shoulder and drops into the chair by his bed, pressing a hand to his forehead.

“Peter, _I’m_ the one who made mistakes. I shouldn’t… you didn’t come to me because you didn’t feel like you could. And that’s on me.”

And he just looks so tired that Peter immediately starts babbling.

“It wasn’t—Mr. Stark, it wasn’t like—I just, I knew we had been fighting and I thought—wait, that’s not what I meant, not like it was your fault we were fighting, we both—I mean _I_ was the one who wanted to keep it secret, I just thought it wasn’t that big a deal, even though obviously I knew it was a big deal, and I shouldn’t have gone out to fight but I thought you would need me and—”

“ _Kid_.”

Tony raises his head and Peter closes his mouth. Tony stares at him for such a long time that Peter starts to feel a flush creeping up his neck, half expecting Tony to just leave abruptly, like he did on the rooftop.

When Tony does speak, though, it’s in a carefully measured voice.

“Peter,” he says, “whatever I did to make you think you couldn’t… that I couldn’t handle all of this, _I’m_ the one who’s sorry, okay?”

Peter looks down at his lap, because he can’t handle the expression on Mr. Stark’s face.

“Is my aunt… is she okay?” he says.

“She’s… tired. You’ve been here about eighteen hours. Nobody’s slept much, but I think her least of all.”

“Yeah. I mean, that’s… is she pissed though? One a scale of one to forever, how long do you think it’s going to be before she lets me out of the apartment?”

Peter’s doing that thing he always does, falling back on humor to save himself from the seriousness of the situation, of the expression on Mr. Stark’s face.

But for once it doesn’t work. Mr. Stark’s expression goes even darker—just for a second before he struggles to bring it back to something resembling neutral, but not before Peter sees it, and figures out what it means:

Mr. Stark doesn’t think Peter is going to make it back to his apartment.

“Oh,” says Peter, and he looks down quickly to hide the terror that he can _feel_ rising to his expression. “Oh, I’m… that’s…”

Peter clenches his fists in the sheets to hide how much they’re shaking. Even after what happened on the bank, even with all of Bruce’s admonishments and Dr. Strange’s warnings, only now does Peter realize that he never actually thought it would come to this. The revelation has his breath catching in his throat again, but he forces himself to inhale, because he can’t—he won’t do it again. He won’t leave Mr. Stark or Aunt May thinking he is terrified to go, not this time. Not when it’s his fault it’s happening this way.

“I shouldn’t have gone to the river,” he says. His voice is small, but no matter how many times he swallows he can’t seem to make it any larger. “I knew I was being stupid, but I thought you might need me and I just—”

Tony is on his feet again, his hand back on Peter’s shoulder.

“Don’t do that to yourself, kid.”

His voice is surprisingly even, almost sharp, and it makes Peter look up. Mr. Stark’s expression is hard and penetrating, his mouth a solid line, and if he is feeling any of the same resignation that Peter is, he isn’t allowing it to show. He waits until Peter locks eyes with him to speak again.

“Listen to me carefully, okay?” he says. “In all the time I’ve known you, you have only ever done what you’ve thought will help the most people in the best way and with the tools you have available. There’s no way in hell you get to be ashamed of that, do you hear me? Not on my watch.”

Peter swallows again, because it’s becoming harder and harder to stamp the tears down. But he forces himself to keep eye contact when he says, “Mr. Stark, I’m gonna die.”

Tony’s hand clamps harder on his shoulder, but his expression remains the same. Still focused. Determined.

“That’s also not gonna happen on my watch, got it? We’re still working on it, all of us this time. Bruce thinks—”

“Bruce?” says Peter. “So you haven’t… you haven’t heard from Dr. Strange? Or the Guardians?”

For the first time, Tony falters.

“Strange sent a note,” he says slowly. “To you, I guess, but none of us saw it until after…. He’s still looking, Pete.”

Peter closes his eyes. “Yeah, okay. Okay—” His eyes snap open. “Wait, how’d you get the note?”

“Your scary girlfriend brought it, gave it to Bruce. He didn’t want to show me, but thankfully we’re getting beyond the secrets phase, since he knows either me or your aunt is going to ki—”

“Wait, _MJ_ ?” says Peter, pushing himself up on his elbows. Mr. Stark tries to push him back down, but Peter doesn’t allow it. “What do you mean, she brought it? Is she _here_?”

“The whole dork squad is here,” says Tony. “Her and your friend Ted—”

“Ned?”

“That’s what I said. They were at your apartment when we went to get your aunt, and some genius—I’m not saying who, but it was Clint—thought it would be a good idea to bring them along.”

“And they’ve been here the whole time?”

“They’ve proven _annoyingly_ difficult to get rid of,” says Mr. Stark. “You think taking that thing in the river down was hard? Count yourself lucky you were unconscious while we were trying to come up with a good cover story to feed to Ned’s mom. And that was with Natasha on our side.”

“My aunt can’t stand her,” says Peter faintly. “They’re really here?”

Tony’s brow furrows. “You wanna see them?” he asks. “They’ve been asking ever since we got here, but you… your aunt didn’t think it was a good idea until you looked a little less…”

“Dawn of the Dead?” Peter suggests, nodding at the fading bruises.

Tony doesn’t laugh, but he does jerk his shoulder in acknowledgement.

Peter twists the blankets in his hands again. He’s thinking of the looks on their faces when he told them about the virus. He can’t imagine how much worse those faces must have been when they learned of what happened on the bank. Or how they will look when he _does_ …

He can’t even think the word. But he knows it’s coming. Even with Mr. Stark’s grip firm on his shoulder, oxygen flowing into his lungs, he can feel it—feel it in a way he hasn’t felt it yet, even bruising left and right and falling asleep in class and sopping up that bloody nose after the fight with Doc Oc. It’s that small breaking, that little snap he felt deep inside himself just before everything went to hell at the river—whatever broke in that moment is still broken, and even though the bruises have faded and the promise that breaking carries has receded, Peter can tell it’s still there, just waiting. Eventually it will rise up again in full force, and no matter what Tony says, when that happens there will be nothing any of them can do to stop it.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe I should just—”

“You should see them,” says Tony. “Believe me, kid, I get the instinct to isolate. But it’s one you gotta battle against. They’re good friends. Everyone needs that.”

Peter exhales shakily. Then he nods.

Mr. Stark squeezes his shoulder once more, then releases it so he can turn toward the doorway.

“FRIDAY—”

“Wait.”

Mr. Stark turns back.

“I just,” says Peter, “is there any way I could—” He swallows again. “I just really hate being… like this.”

He gestures at his surroundings.

Mr. Stark considers Peter for a moment, a moment that drags on so long Peter is sure it is going to end in a scolding, because how can he even be thinking about getting out of bed at a time like this? After all the times he has been told to stay put, to rest, to let himself be taken care of, and after how badly that has backfired, he is sure Mr. Stark is going to say no.

But he doesn’t.

“Sure, kid,” he says. “Let’s bring the party to them.”

 

* * *

 

Half an hour later, Peter is dressed in a pair of Tony’s own sweatpants and a baggy zip-up hoodie, looking hunched and pale in the wheelchair Tony has insisted upon—because he’s not _that_ irresponsible that he would let the kid walk—but considerably less morbid than he did in the hospital bed. Tony has some of the medical staff bring oxygen and some other supplies up ahead of them to further spare the kid, but the IV has to stay. Peter prods at it throughout the ride to the lift and into the common area, until Tony threatens to break out the supply of vibranium T’Challa sent a few months ago and chain him to the armrests if he doesn’t cut it out.

Tony gets what the kid is doing, not wanting to appear weak in front of… well, in front of anyone. Part of him wants to scream as he pushes the wheelchair toward the common room, because he knows it’s this very instinct that got them into this mess in the first place. But another part of him—the part that is winning—desperately wants to indulge it. Because if the kid can be strong enough to put on the brave face, maybe he really is strong enough to beat this thing.

Despite the fact that May has not withdrawn her earlier edict that Bruce should not be allowed anywhere near Peter, Tony has still spent the last eighteen hours—minus the one or so spent sitting vigil in May’s place—helping him to modify the formula of his original injections along with Helen and anyone else on the compound with even an ounce of medical knowledge. They’ve conclusively determined that none of them have the know-how to get rid of the virus, but they’re hopeful they might still be able to slow it down.

But even that is a long shot. If Bruce’s earlier prediction of two to three days is correct, they’ve already lost maybe half their time.

Which is why Tony has also been desperately scanning every galactic and intergalactic channel available, searching for any sign of Strange or the Guardians. But so far there has been nothing.

Peter looks better than he did when they brought him in. It’s undeniable, and Tony tries to hold on to this, to use it as evidence that their time is not up, but whenever he returns to this fact for comfort his brain sends him rocketing back to the memory of Peter on the medical table, so dark with bruises he was almost unrecognizable, face covered in blood, utterly motionless. Of course he looks better now. Better was the only direction for him to go and keep on living.

But he doesn’t look _good_. The outline of those bruises remain, and where they aren’t tinting his skin green and blue he is almost as pale as he was in that moment on the bank just before he spewed red all over the ground. More than that, though—there is a look in the kid’s eyes, one Tony can tell he is trying to hide. But for all the lies and half-truths he’s told throughout his life, Peter still isn’t very good at keeping secrets. Tony’s seen that hollow look before. He knows what it means.

But he doesn’t mention it. Just takes the kid to see his friends.

And as soon as they walk into the common room, Peter sits up a little straighter, and some—though not nearly all—of that darkness lifts.

The kids are in the corner near the bar, where Clint has set up a dusty old foosball table that Tony didn’t even know they had. MJ is still in her pajamas, curled up in an armchair with a book nearly as thick as her own waist, but Ned is at the table, playing a somewhat lackluster game with Clint—and losing spectacularly, by the look of things. It’s just the three of them, plus Wanda, who is behind the bar pouring for what one wild moment Tony thinks is whiskey into mugs, but turns out to be iced tea. No one else is around, either catching up on much-needed sleep or helping Bruce in the lab. Probably the latter.

Wanda is the first to spot them. She nearly drops the pitcher, but catches it telekinetically at the last moment, and merely slops a lot of iced tea all over the bar. Everyone turns to look at her, then follow her gaze to where Peter and Tony are standing in the doorway, the former’s cheeks suddenly faintly pink with what would no doubt be a fantastic blush, were he not so pale.

“Hey, guys,” he says. “Looks like I’m missing a hell of a party.”

Nobody laughs, but MJ does get abruptly to her feet, her book falling to the floor with a resounding clunk. Clint and Wanda straighten up, but Ned just stands by the foosball table, fists clenched around the handles, mouth slightly open.

Nobody says anything, so Tony takes another step into the room, then another, pushing the wheelchair toward them, even though Peter now looks like he would like very much to sink right through the floor and back into his hospital room below.

“Steady, Pete,” Tony mutters. “Give ‘em a second.”

But as they draw level with the others, even Tony is starting to wonder if this was a good idea. Maybe he should have warned them, given the kids a minute to gather themselves, because Ned is gaping like a fish out of water, and MJ—MJ looks pissed, though he can’t tell if that has to do with Peter’s appearance or if it’s just her default.

He pulls the wheelchair and the IV to a halt, and then there is a beat while they all stare at each other. It’s excruciating, and Tony is just about to beg Clint or Wanda to break it with a wide-eyed stare when MJ says,

“Hey, ass-face. What was that about all your blood staying in your body?”

She leans forward, like she is about to punch him on the arm, and Tony, as relieved as he is that the silence has been broken, raises his own hand in a tiny shield.

“Ah-ah!” he says. “Now that the blood is officially _back_ in the body, let’s work on keeping it that way, sound good?”

MJ lowers her hand, and the awkwardness is back.

This time, Peter tries to fill it.

“You guys,” he says, “I am so, so sorry you got pulled into this. I never meant to—I didn’t think—”

The pissed-off expression on MJ’s face gets sharper, and she opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, Ned makes a noise like the air being let out of a balloon, and everyone shifts their attention to him.

For a second Ned doesn’t even look like he knows what he just did. He swallows convulsively a few times, looking from person to person, and then his eyes finally settle on Peter.

“Thisisthegreatestdayofmylife,” he says in a rush, and the adults all don similar expressions of horror. Ned glances at them apologetically, but he doesn’t seem able to stop himself. When his gaze returns to Peter, he plows on. “This is—this is the greatest day of my life. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I know you almost died and that was— _super_ uncool by the way, dude, but—Peter. Peter. I got to ride on a jet with Falcon. I’m playing foosball with Hawkeye. I—I told Black Widow she’s my hero and she _didn’t_ murder me.”

“He did,” says MJ. “It was exactly as mortifying as it sounds. For everyone involved.”

Tony opens his own mouth, an incredulous admonishment on his lips, but then he looks down and sees that something miraculous is happening to Peter: he is _grinning_. It transforms his whole face, nearly erasing the hell that the last twenty-four hours have wrought, and Tony closes his mouth so hard he can almost hear it snap shut.

“I’m really glad this has been such a positive experience for you, Ned,” he says. “I’ll try to almost die more often, yeah?”

“Would you? I mean—obviously not.” Ned falters slightly under simultaneous glares from Wanda and MJ (Clint is laughing). “But for real, dude. Tony Stark offered me a _job_.”

“Yeah, and that offer might actually be contingent upon a few things besides your eventually high school graduation, come to think of it,” says Tony. “Like, for instance, learning when and when not to run your mouth.”

“Sure, Tones, and I suppose you think you’re qualified to give lessons?” says Hawkeye. He nods at Peter. “Good to see you up, Spider-Dude. You think you can handle having your ass handed to you for a few rounds? I’m not afraid to cream a guy in a wheelchair.”

“Please,” says Peter, his grin widening, “I could kick your ass if I was still unconscious. Let’s do it, old man.”

Thank God for Clint, Tony thinks, because as soon as he has set Peter up on one side of the game, he has to take a step back. Clint knows how to handle kids. Hell, he knows how to keep his head in all sorts of situations, and right now he’s just the bastion Tony needs, because as soon as the game has started Tony feels like something has punctured within him. The strength he’s been affecting for the last eighteen hours slides away.

He watches Ned gabbing about the last twenty-four hours while he plays left arm to Peter’s right, watches Peter smile and listen and relax in a way he certainly couldn’t have done if they had stayed in that hospital room, just the two of them. He watches Clint ease into the game, and Wanda from the corner, twitching her fingers subtly to guide the ball toward Ned and Peter’s players whenever it starts to drift in Clint’s favor.

And then he watches MJ shuffle forward and, subtly, hook her pinky finger into Peter’s left hand, which is still resting on the arm of his wheelchair because of the IV, and it’s so painfully cute and young and hopeful that the same urge to flee he felt when Peter first woke rises up in him. This time Tony doesn’t fight it. While everyone is distracted, he backs up a few more steps and then, when he’s sure no one is going to stop him, turns back to the door.

He stops short. May is there, leaning against the doorframe, wearing pajamas she must have borrowed from Wanda or Natasha and looking just slightly less tired than she did when Tony ordered her to bed. Tony freezes for a second, then approaches her.

“I should have told you he was—”

She waves a hand, shushing him. Her eyes are on Peter, but she doesn’t step into the room, and Tony realizes that she doesn’t want him to know she’s there. She watches him play for a second, then shifts her gaze to Tony.

“FRIDAY told me where you went,” she says. “This is… this is good. Thank you.”

“Are you—?”

“I’m fine,” she says, though she doesn’t look it. “Let’s just give him a minute before… Let’s just give him a minute.”

Tony is still fighting the urge to flee, but he no longer has the luxury of following this impulse. He joins May in the doorway, and together they watch the little group on the other side of the room, May thoughtfully quiet, Tony uncertainly so.

“He looks almost okay,” she says after a while. “When I first saw him in that bed…”

Tony nods. What he doesn’t say is that the look is deceiving. Peter will start to backslide—probably pretty soon, based on the blood panels they’ve been performing every hour. He doesn’t have to say this, because May already knows it. Dr. Cho has been keeping her informed. Tony wants her to have her moment, though, just like she wants Peter to have his.

But apparently the fates are not so inclined to be kind to May Parker. Because just a second later, someone clears their throat behind them.

They both turn to see Bruce standing in the hallway behind them, looking slightly less haggard than he did the last time the three of them were in a room together, which Tony knows is only owing to the fact that he insisted the man shower and take a nap while the last set of labs was running. May’s expression darkens when she spots him, but she doesn’t lash out—just steps out of the doorway alongside Tony, allowing the door to slide shut behind them.

Bruce apparently takes this as encouragement, because he takes a very small step toward her. He has a tablet in his hands, is turning it nervously in them.

“May,” he says, “I’ll understand if the answer is no, but… if it’s on the table, I’d really like to talk to you for a minute. And you, Tony.”

Tony glances sidelong at May, bracing for the no—or, more likely, the go fuck yourself—but even though her jaw is tight and her eyes narrowed with dislike as she stares at Bruce, neither of these things emerge from her mouth. She just nods.

It is with a heavy feeling of deja vu that Tony leads them both into the same conference room where May yelled at Bruce the night before. But there is no shouting this time, no standing feet apart and staring daggers while Bruce apologizes, shame-faced. This time, May marches straight to the table at the center of the room and drops into one of the seats, looking for all the world like she owns the place, even though she is wearing silk pajamas and hasn’t showered in days.

Tentatively, Bruce takes the seat across from her, Tony the one beside. Bruce turns the tablet on and slides it over to them.

“It’s Peter’s latest bloodwork,” he says, as May grips the tablet and stares down at the charts and figures, Tony looking over her shoulder. “The level of infection is almost back up to what it was when he was brought in.”

“That’s not the timeline you gave me,” says Tony, looking up sharply.

“It… is, actually,” says Bruce. He sounds exhausted. “It’s just the worse end of what I predicted. This thing multiplies at an exponential rate, and it’s acting… defensively, after what happened at the river. I’d say we have maybe twenty-four hours before another episode.” He presses the fingertips of both hands to his mouth for just a second before continuing. “May, I know you said you didn’t want me treating him and I get it, but if we don’t get out ahead of this, we’re out of options. We just don’t have the resources to tackle another bleed like the one yesterday.”

May doesn’t say anything for a long time. She is not looking at Bruce, her eyes glued to the tablet. In one corner of the screen, there is a magnified image of the virus itself, moving like a weird robot across the surface of one of Peter’s blood cells. Her silence goes on so long that Tony begins to wonder if she’s heard Bruce at all, but just when he’s about to ask, she responds.

“You have something?” When she looks up her eyes are red-rimmed, but her voice is fierce. “You have a cure?”

“I have a stall,” says Bruce. “An amended version of the formula I gave him before. It… might give us another day or two.”

“Or it might trigger another reaction,” says May bluntly.

Bruce nods.

“It’s not ideal,” he says. “It’s so far from ideal I realize I must sound insane for suggesting it. But if we’re going to do it we should act fast. The longer we wait, the weaker Peter’s immune system becomes. He has the best chance of beating an adverse reaction if we do this as soon as possible.”

Tony holds his breath, looking at May, but she only has eyes for Bruce.

For the longest time, he’s sure she’s going to say no. And that makes him feel so helpless he can’t stand it, because he knows he has no power here. This is May’s decision, and hers alone.

But she doesn’t say no.

“Do whatever you can,” she says, and she stands abruptly, pushing the tablet away from her. “I’m going to go see my kid.”

 

* * *

 

 

Tony wants the set-up to take longer. He wants to give Peter as much time with his friends as he can, time to laugh and joke and be a kid—but they have him back in the medical bay less than an hour after May walks out of the conference room.

The entire medical staff is there, ringed around the bed in various stages of anticipation, ready to jump on the emergency equipment they have set up the second there is a hint of a negative reaction. There are so many of them that they have had to relegate the others—MJ and Ned and Clint have been joined by Sam and Natasha once again—to the common area once more, though Tony is pretty sure they’ve all snuck down into the medical hallway to be nearby. Not that he would want them inside even if there was room. He doesn’t even really want to be here himself, the memory of blood pouring out of Peter’s mouth already making his chest feel tight.

But there’s also no way in hell he’s going to be anywhere else.

At the center of the ring of people is Peter, sitting on the edge of his bed and looking like he’s trying so hard not to be nervous it actually makes Tony’s chest hurt just looking at him. May is standing next to Peter, clutching his hand with one of hers, rubbing his shoulder with the other. They make such a tense pair that Tony almost wants to call it off—to wait just a little while longer to see if they can find Dr. Strange—but that is no longer an option.

The single hour that has passed since Peter woke has already wrought the evidence of Bruce’s timeline on Peter’s body. Even as tense as he is, he is still swaying, and Tony can tell May’s hand is only partly there for comfort—she is also holding him up. His breath is coming a little shallower—they’ve put him back on the oxygen—and even as he watches Bruce prepare the serum, his eyelids are drooping, like he could drop off to sleep at any second.

They are out of time to wait.

Still, everyone holds their breath as Bruce holds up the needle, which is full of something black and dangerous-looking. Something that does not even remotely appear to be something that should enter a human body.

It doesn’t help that Bruce looks just as terrified as the rest of them as he steps toward Peter.

But he swallows it. Just like the rest of them. Takes a deep breath, holds the needle up.

Tony crosses his arms over his chest to hide their shaking.

“You ready?” says Bruce.

Peter glances at Tony under those heavy-lidded eyes. Tony nods firmly, once, and is both touched and a little frightened when this seems to stiffen Peter’s resolve.

“Let’s do it,” he croaks.

Bruce glances at May, who is almost as white as Peter. But she nods too.

There is a moment of utter stillness as Peter holds out his trembling arm to give Bruce access to the IV port, and Tony is so tense he almost expects Bruce to sense it, to call it off at the last moment, because there is no way he can go through with it while everyone is so afraid—the anxiety feels like a curse.

But he doesn’t. He slides the needle into the port, thumb on the plunger.

And then Dr. Strange is there.

There is a collective gasp as the portal opens and the man steps out of it, but everyone is too stunned to scream; the sparking golden circle, which appears right between Tony and Peter, is gone so fast that none of them have a moment to register what has happened fast enough to react—none of them except Bruce, who pulls the needle out of the IV port so fast he drops it.

It rolls to a stop at Dr. Strange’s feet, and he glances down at it with a raised eyebrow for just a second before raising his gaze to an open-mouthed, wide-eyed Peter.

“What part of ‘keep your head down’ didn’t you understand?” he says. He urns to Bruce. “And you—what part of leave this to the actual doctors was unclear?”

Now someone screams. It’s one of the nurses. Thankfully she is cut off quickly by Dr. Cho, who stomps on her foot.

“You—you—you—” Bruce sputters. “Where have you been?”

“For the last three hours?” says Dr. Strange. “Looking for you. Or do you mean for the last five days?”

“Of course I mean the last five days! Do you have any idea—”

“Actually, I do,” says Dr. Strange, raising his voice above Bruce’s before the other man can get going. Everyone else is still too stunned to speak. “Which is why you should put this nonsense” —he gestures to the medical equipment, the doctors and nurses, the discarded syringe— “away, and come upstairs with me.” He smiles now, turning once again to Peter. “You have some visitors.”

 

 


	10. The End

“I changed my mind,” says Ned. “ _ This _ is the best day of my life.”

Peter can’t even find it in him to be exasperated with Ned. If it weren’t for the fact that he can still barely keep his eyes open, he would be inclined to agree.

Everyone—Peter, May, MJ, Ned, and half of the world’s living Avengers—is all standing on the outdoor walkway that rings the Avengers Facility, staring at the spaceship that is hovering a hundred feet or so above the back lawn, watching with bated breath. It hasn’t landed yet because the moment it entered Earth’s atmosphere about sixteen different government agencies from around the world marked it for immediate engagement and/or destruction—and now they are all waiting while Tony shouts these agencies down in order to ensure that the whole facility doesn’t do an  _ Independence Day _ re-enactment the moment the ship touches down. 

Peter, who is back in his wheelchair with May behind him and his friends on either side, kind of can’t believe that they’ve gotten this far only to be held up by a moment of interstellar bureaucracy. But, since he honestly can’t believe it’s happening  _ at all _ , he decides he’s not really in the best position to question it.

Still, even trapped in this bizarre moment of anticipation, even Peter can recognize that Ned is right—at the very least, the ensemble is hard to beat. 

“It’s the same day, doofus,” says MJ. “And if I were you I’d be worried about peaking too soon.” 

She turns to Clint, who is holding watch over Peter’s makeshift little family, having become, apparently, the de-facto dad of the weird group while Peter has been asleep.

“Is there any way you guys can speed this up?” she says.

Clint’s eyes are trained on the spaceship, but Peter can tell from his expression that he is listening over the comm behind his ear to the conversation taking place inside the facility behind them. Peter’s catching snatches of it with his enhanced hearing, but just bits and pieces—everything keeps fuzzing in and out, not just his hearing but his eyesight and, more worryingly, his ability to feel his own limbs. Considering that his entire body seems to be functioning like a badly-tuned radio at the moment, it’s no wonder he’s mostly just heard variations of the word “numbskull.”

Which Peter thinks might be a little harsh, considering the planet’s history with alien invasions and all that. But at the same time, he’d really, really like whatever numbskulls are on the other end of the line to just get over it, thank you very much.

Clint seems to be thinking along the same lines. He presses a finger to his ear and says, “Tony—”

But Dr. Strange, who is at the forefront of the little cluster, his cloak rippling out behind him as he gazes up at the ship, turns around and cuts across him.

“You know, I’m getting a little tired of being so underutilized,” he says. “Did I or did I not just travel across the universe to bring you these people?”

And without waiting for an answer, he cuts a portal into the space directly to everyone’s right. 

There is a pause and then—

Six people come stumbling out of the portal—or, as close to people as the Guardians can be called. Drax and Groot, Rocket, Quill, Gamora—even Mantis is there, and for a second Peter is so full of unbelievable happiness that he can’t take a breath, even as everyone around him goes utterly still.

But the shocked glee only lasts a second, because the Guardians are bickering so loudly that, incredibly, none of them seem to notice that they’ve just walked straight through a magic portal. 

“ _ See _ , this is what I’ve been telling you, Gandalf is standing  _ right there _ !” says Quill, whose voice is first to rise above the rest. 

He gestures at Strange, as though tall, exasperated purveyors of the mystic arts appear in front of him out of nowhere on a daily basis.

Which, now that Peter thinks of it… maybe. 

“And  _ I’m  _ telling you, the magic blanket man could literally be on any planet,” says Rocket. “You took a wrong turn at Kronos. You should have let me drive, but  _ no _ , Mr. Never Stops for Directions  _ never stops for directions! _ ”

“I am Groot!”

“I know where Earth is, you fleasack of a giant rodent, I’m  _ from  _ Earth.”

“Yeah, and the last time you were here you were wetting your star-spangled jammies, so—”

“Uh, guys?” 

The Guardians have been so caught up in this argument that none of them have looked beyond Dr. Strange. At the sound of Peter’s voice, they all turn their heads to toward their welcoming committee and go silent.

But only for the barest fraction of a second. 

“Spider-Boy,” says Drax. His eyes sweep over Peter as he steps toward him and then immediately assumes a somber expression. “The evil blanket’s master told us you were ill, but he did not tell us it was this dire. The sickness has eaten your metal shell.”

“Hey Drax,” says Peter faintly. “I’m—what?”

“I am Groot!” says Groot.

Aside from Groot, however, everyone else seems too stunned to speak. But Drax ploughs on.

“Without your red exoskeleton you are truly grotesque,” he says. “Like a Kalaxian mollusk that has been shucked and left to fester on a planet with no sun. Only you are… far less appetizing.” 

Peter can think of nothing to say to this.

Thankfully, Gamora chooses this moment to jump in. She smacks Drax on the pectoral, shoves him aside, and her expression immediately softens as it lands on Peter. 

“Peter,” she says. “I am so sorry we’re late.”

“Yeah, you think?”  

Everyone turns to look as Tony steps onto the walkway, still holding his phone and wearing an expression of extreme irritation. As the Guardians’ eyes light on him, he holds his hands out in a  _ what the hell _ gesture.

“What the hell?” he says. “What in the wide, dark universe took you people so long?” 

“Hey!” Quill’s face lights up. “Tony! Long time no see, man, how have—”

Tony holds up a hand, expression going from exasperated to incredulous. 

“Are you kidding me?” he says. “We just spent five days playing Whack-A-Mole with this kid’s very  _ terrifying  _ symptoms and you want to do the greetings thing? I think not, Spaceman Spiff. Cut to the chase; you have the cure?”

“I am Groot!” 

Behind him, May whispers, “I think I might be having a stroke.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder. Peter puts his own over it, but it’s not just for comfort: Something very strange is happening in his heart, something that is bolstered by the relief he can hear in May’s voice, weak with incredulity though it is: The small breaking is beginning to fade. 

Peter grins.  

The other, older Peter rolls his eyes. 

“ _ Do we have a cure _ ?” he repeats. “Uh, no, we just travelled through fifteen realms of the galaxy to come and tell you we failed. We’re just here for the potluck.” He glances at Gamora. “Can you believe this—?”

But if he is expecting commiseration, he does not find it in Gamora’s steely glare, nor in the death-stare Tony is giving him when he turns back. 

Quill clears his throat.

“Uh, Rocket, you wanna—?”

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, kid,” he adds to Peter, as he begins to rummage through his vest, extracting what looks like a handful of birdseed, several robotic thumbs, and something that is almost like a strawberry, except it is purple and glowing faintly, “exoskeletons aside, you do actually look terrible. Aha!”

He holds up a long, narrow glass tube, which is full of what appears, to Peter, to be pure liquid gold. 

Tony reaches for it, but Rocket snatches it out of the way. 

“Hold your horses,” he says. “Rumor has it that you’re a very wealthy man, Mr. Stark.”

“ _ Rocket _ !” says every member of the Guardians at once.

Simultaneously, everyone who is  _ not _ a Guardian makes identical noises of outrage, while Tony says, “You wanna get drop-kicked, racoon? Because that’s how you get drop-kicked.”

“All right, all right! It was a joke, calm your digits.”

Rocket hands the vial over, but before it can land in Tony’s outstretched hand, Bruce, who has been standing quietly at the back of the group, snatches it first. 

“Sorry!” he says, holding his hands up as Tony rounds on him. “Just—am I crazy if I want to run a few tests before we stab an alien substance into this very sick kid?”

“I might second that,” says May, whose voice is regaining some strength as the shock of having six aliens step out of a hole in the fabric of space and time right in front of her begins to wear off. 

“We have already tested it,” says Mantis. 

“That’s right,” says Quill smugly. “We’ve already—wait, when did we do that?”

“We gave it to you on the way, while you were sleeping,” says Gamora. 

“You  _ what _ ?”

“We needed to ensure it was safe and you’re the closest thing we have to a human,” says Gamora, raising an eyebrow. “Why are you upset? Clearly it’s not dangerous, since you’re not dead.”

“And what if I  _ was  _ dead?”

“Then we would know not to give it to Peter.”

“Are you—did you—did you have Mantis put me under while I wasn’t looking? That is such—”

But Peter’s attention drifts as they descend back into their quarrelling, over to Tony and Bruce, who appear to be having a very quick, very silent exchange, judging from their expressions.

After a moment, Bruce says, “Risk it?”

Tony glances down at Peter, sees that he’s listening, and, rather than close him out, steps subtly to the side to welcome him into the conversation. 

“I think that’s up to you, Pete.”

Peter feels a swell of gratitude—for both of them, but mostly for Tony, who is looking at him with worry, but not condescension. Like Peter is an equal.

Peter tightens his grip on Aunt May’s hand as she tightens hers on his shoulder.

“What have I got to lose?” he says.

Tony regards him, hard, for a full fifteen seconds. Then he nods. Turns to the Guardians, and whistles loudly to break up their ceaseless arguing.

“Attention, Stooges!” he says. “We’re doing this thing. Try to concentrate for five seconds so you can tell us how.”

The Guardians part to allow Mantis to step forward.

“I am going to put you to sleep now,” she says to Peter, smiling.

There is a moment where Peter is struck by a thrill of wild anticipation, but before he can voice it, Mantis places her hands on his temples.

And he floats.

 

* * *

All of Peter’s awakenings, for days or maybe for weeks, have been the painful kind—all tainted by worry or secrets or just actual pain—so when he wakes this time, he’s almost sure he’s still dreaming.

The first thing he sees is that he’s not in a hospital bed. He is, in fact, in a large bedroom, with a wide window overlooking the back lawn of the Avenger’s Facility, where it appears the Guardians’ ship has finally been allowed to land.

The second thing he sees is Mr. Stark.

“Hey, Pete,” he says. 

Peter sits up. No one tries to force him down this time, and it’s immediately apparent why: Peter feels  _ amazing _ . Clear-headed, clear-sighted… he looks down at his arms, and sees that they are clean. Not a hint of a bruise. Even the IV is gone.

When he looks back up at Mr. Stark, he is grinning so widely he feels like his face might split. 

For once, Mr. Stark is grinning back.

“It worked,” says Peter.

“It worked.” 

That’s Bruce’s voice, and Peter swings his head around to see that Dr. Banner is standing near the door, alongside May. Both of them are clean and dressed, still tired-looking, but wearing almost identical soft smiles as they approach. May sits on the bed, kisses his hair, but Bruce stops just short of this, thankfully. Though he does look rather watery as he hands a tablet to Peter. On the screen is a single image: a red blood cell, magnified. 

Clean.

“And now begins the phase of your life where you sit very, very still and don’t go anywhere near aliens, genetic experiments, or any of their variants for an extremely long time,” says Tony. “Don’t try to fight me on that, either, me and your aunt have already discussed it.”

May nods. “Forty years was the consensus.”

But Peter is too happy to feel even a slight amount of apprehension at this sentence. He just keeps smiling.

“Can I wheedle that down to, like, two weeks?” 

May hugs him again. 

“We’ll negotiate later,” she says.

“Your aunt is right,” says Tony. “You’re getting a slight stay on that sentence anyway. We still have company.”

 

* * *

Aunt May and Bruce both insist that they have had enough adventure for a lifetime in the last two days, and not nearly enough sleep: both of them retreat to separate rooms, leaving it to Tony to take the kid downstairs. Tony’s glad to do so. Even with the latest labs, the evidence of the kid’s aliveness in his hands and on the computers he built, he’s still not quite ready to let him out of his sight. And so they go down together. 

The difference between the first time Tony escorted Peter into the common room and this one could not be starker. 

The first—and, in Tony’s opinion, most important—difference is that Peter is not in the wheelchair this time. He’s looking a little awkward dressed in Tony’s clothes—the only ones available even close to his size—but otherwise better than he’s looked in days. Probably longer than that, but Tony doesn’t kick himself too hard for not knowing for sure. There will be plenty of time to keep an eye on the kid in the future. Plenty of time, too, for berating himself for what he’s already missed.

For now, Peter’s eyes are bright, his smile wide, and when he glances at Tony on the threshold outside of the common room, hearing the thump of the bass beyond, it’s with the same giddy, youthful enthusiasm Tony was so glad for just yesterday, on the bank. Only this time it doesn’t slide away.   

Tony claps a hand on his shoulder, squeezes for just a second, and then steers him inside. 

This is where those differences become even starker.

Where yesterday there was only the somber little group of Wanda, Clint and the kids, the common area is now packed to bursting, with all the aforementioned people being now joined by Natasha and Sam, as well as what appears to be the entire medical staff. They are all clutching drinks and gathered around the Guardians, who appear to be recounting the tale of how they obtained the cure. 

“It’s a plague that was well-known on my homeplanet,” Gamora is saying, while Tony, following the kid’s lead, sidles in quietly at the back of the group. “We called it the Warrior’s Death, because it took only those who were strongest, and because there was only one known cure: an elixir found only in a wellspring on a planet with no name, and guarded by a witch with nine arms. To claim it, one had to do battle with the witch, and that was only if they could find the planet. Many who attempted it were lost to the void. And those who did find it more often than not were killed by the witch herself.”

“Yup.” Quill is splayed out on the couch beside her, a glass of whiskey in one hand, a smirk on his face, clearly enjoying the rapt audience. “So you can see why we weren’t exactly able to make the jump to Earth the second we got Goatee’s message.” 

He nods to Dr. Strange, who is leaning on the bar, looking odd in civilian clothes and holding a drink of his own. He alone seems to have noticed Tony and Peter come in; he lifts the tumbler and winks, but doesn’t draw attention to either of them.

“Yeah, and also because Quill is a terrible navigator,” Rocket interjects. “If he’d let me have the helm we woulda been here four days ago—badabing, badaboom. But no, he’s always gotta steer with his di—”

“You couldn’t find your way out of a burlap sack,” Quill interrupts, “and I know, because I’ve stuffed you in one before.”

“And you’re still gonna pay for it, buddy! You got no right—!”

“How else am I supposed to get you to shut up,  _ pal _ ? Please, enlighten me, because I’ve tried every other—”

“ _ Anyway _ ,” says Gamora, silencing Quill with another steely glare, “it took us some time to track the planet down. And once we did, we ran into some… other complications.”

She glances sidelong at Quill, almost as if expecting him to continue the story, but for once it seems Quill is not eager to be the center of attention. He shrinks into the couch, taking an almost  _ bashful _ sip of his drink.

“They don’t need to hear about that part,” he says, when the expectant stares don’t immediately disappear. “I mean, you’ve seen one space battle you’ve seen them all, am I right?”

“Quill.” Drax is standing over everyone, hands folded across his massive chest, and he looks at Quill now with an expression of concern. “I don’t understand. Why are you so reluctant to tell them of our glorious battle for the Spider-Boy’s life? A warrior should be proud of his victories.”

“And I am, I’m just saying, we don’t need to bore them with details if—”

“Is it because you became trapped in the planet’s anus?”

Suddenly, Rocket is roaring with laughter.

“Oh, my God, I was so mad about the sack I almost forgot about the anus!”

Quill sits up, sloshing his drink down his front, his face bright red as everyone around him goes a similar color, trying to contain their own laughter. 

“It was not—it was not an anus,” he says. “It was a very deep, very hot sulfur cave, which, due to its unfortunate shape and smell, might have evoked certain—anus-like imagery, but it absolutely was  _ not _ —”

“The witch called it an anus,” says Drax innocently, “just before she flung you inside of it as though you were nothing more than a very small, very fragile child. Do you not remember this?”

“I am Groot,” says Groot, and all of the Guardians except Quill join Rocket in his laughter. 

And now Tony turns to Peter, who has been watching all of this with a grin that has, somehow, gotten even wider since he woke. He catches the kid’s eye. The kid nods.

Tony clears his throat. 

And then all eyes are on them.

For a second Tony expects  _ this _ to be like the first time. There is certainly a moment of silence as they all turn, and he glances at Peter, half-expecting him to start looking like he wants to sink through the floor again. But Peter just keeps grinning, and a second later, he is engulfed as a dozen people try to hug him at once. 

For a solid twenty minutes, this friendly chaos becomes the object of the party. Everyone wants a moment with Peter, to tell him about what’s happened while he slept, to ask how he’s feeling, to recount the story of Quill and the anus (everyone seems especially concerned that Peter not miss this tale, and so he hears it from several people, much to Quill’s chagrin). People are laughing and crying, chattering and hugging. Tony has to yank a drink out of the kid’s hand on more than one occasion, but Peter doesn’t seem to mind. Not once does his smile fade, though at several points during the ensuing barrage Tony does catch him looking especially bright-eyed, most notably when MJ pulls him into a tight hug.

Tony is off to the side at this point, leaning against the bar with Dr. Strange but not speaking to anyone, yet. He’s still coming to terms with the whiplash of the last few days, and trying to allow himself to sit in this unexpected conclusion for just a while longer. Talking about it will come, but not yet, and thankfully the others seem to realize this. They smile as they pass him by on their way to more drinks, or to join one of the little groups that is starting to form as the initial wave of well-wishers breaks apart into the larger party. But nobody tries to draw him in, which leaves Tony free to watch Peter as he is shuffled from group to group, until, at last, he ends up in MJ’s arms.

It’s brief and almost painfully adorable, because as soon as she grabs him Peter goes wide-eyed, his hands flying up like they’re on fire. He pats her awkwardly on the back, but before he can deepen their contact—and he looks like he wants to—Ned barrels out of nowhere and wraps his arms around the both of them.

“Peter,” he says while he holds them, “you are officially forgiven for breaking my Nintendo in the second grade. You are officially forgiven for— _ everything _ , from here until eternity.”

He releases them. 

“Still the best day of your life?” says Peter.

“Dude, this is the best  _ life _ of my life.”

“Glad I could make it happen, Ned.” He glances sideways at MJ who is, amazingly, smiling. “Good day for you too?”

“The ending was all right,” she says. “Though a little  _ deus ex machina _ for my literary tastes. Literally, apparently. Did you know that guy’s dad was a planet?”

All in all, it ends up being one of the weirdest parties Tony has ever been a part of, and considering who he is, that is saying something. In one corner, Groot and Rocket are teaching Dr. Cho and a gaggle of nurses how to play a card game that is almost certainly not legal on this planet, and probably not on whatever planet they’re from either. In another, Clint, Natasha, and Gamora are exchanging stories—stories Tony finds he is very glad he cannot hear. Wanda and Drax are arm wrestling in the middle of everything, and off to the side, Peter and MJ and Ned are still talking. Laughing. Young.  

Eventually Tony’s shoulders loosen; someone pours him a drink, and after a long, long time, he tears his eyes away from Peter and joins the celebration.

Nobody wants to call it off, and Tony certainly isn’t going to be the one to do so. But eventually, as all parties do, this one begins to disintegrate. Sleep-deprived medical staff make their way back to their quarters. Rocket drifts off in the middle of a con, sitting on Groot’s shoulder, and the other Guardians take up residence on various couches before Tony can so much as suggest they retreat to the privacy of one of the facility’s rooms (he really doesn’t want to bear witness to any of their morning rituals).

And then, around three am, Dr. Strange bids Tony farewell and steps through a portal into the Sanctum Sanctorum.

And it’s just him and Peter.

Peter is sitting on the one couch not occupied by a Guardian, Ned on one side, MJ on the other. Both of his friends are asleep, but when Tony approaches to see if Peter has drifted off as well, his eyes are open and bright, gazing out the window at the Guardians’ ship on the lawn, dark now except for the small light of the security lamps.

Quietly, Tony lowers himself into a chair beside him.

“Hey, Mr. Stark,” says Peter.

“Hey yourself, kid.”

For a second, Tony wants to say something. To tell the kid he’s going to be there for him from here on out. To say how unbelievably happy he is that Peter is here. To comment on this bizarre, wonderful night. He wants to lay the future out, because, somehow, the future is  _ there _ , bright and clean and ready for the taking. But somehow, all the words that rise to his mind seem to small. He can’t find the right ones.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to. 

“Mr. Stark?” Peter whispers.

“Yeah, kid?”

“Life is really weird.”

Tony grins. 

“Yeah,” he says. “And you better get used to it. Yours is gonna last a really, really long time.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, I wasn’t feeling super motivated to re-read/re-edit this chapter since Endgame, as it is not very much an actual AU and kind of bittersweet, considering how things actually turned out. But someone kindly reminded me of my neglect today and I decided to come back to it... and was surprised to find I still really liked it. We should have happy endings every once in a while, even if they aren’t the official version of events.
> 
> I love you all, darlings. 
> 
> Also, I finally got a tumblr! If you feel so inclined, please follow me @signofuncertainty
> 
> More of The Third Option soon. ;)


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